


Flying from a Fire

by top_sessed



Category: Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Accident, Angst, Fluff, Hospitalisation, M/M, Multi, Possession, Self Harm, Sex, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts, Supernatural - Freeform, highschool, mental health, powers, teenage angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 08:58:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18546535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/top_sessed/pseuds/top_sessed
Summary: Tyler moves back to his hometown of Columbus, Ohio to find he now lives across the road from his childhood best friend.However, they both realise things aren’t exactly how they seem, and things start to go horribly wrong.





	1. Chapter 1

“I’m seventeen in two weeks Mom. I’m not twelve!”. A curly, hawk-haired boy shouts through his front door, before pulling it shut, hard.  
  He turns on one heel to face away from the house, letting his head fall back as he sucks in a huge breath to calm himself.  
He loves his mom, in fact he is an inwardly self-professed mommy’s boy, but she’s overly protective, especially since his dad left them last year. He deals with it because he knows it’s just because she loves him and she’s hanging on to him because she knows he’s growing up now. But he does get annoyed sometimes and ends up exploding on her.  
  He opens his eyes after a moment, feeling calmer, head still tilted toward the sky. It’s rather bright today. The sky is a beautiful light cornflower-blue, with light tufts of clouds, so thin they might as well not even be there. The sun is baking already and it’s only quarter to eight in the morning. It’s not surprising considering it’s mid June.  
He takes the day in for a few seconds, then thinks of how he shouted at his Mother.  
_I shouldn’t have talked to her like that._  
  He felt bad, but had no time as he needed to get to school.  
As he strides toward his car, his attention is caught by a hustle and bustle of noises coming from across the street. A moving van is slowly beeping it’s way backward up the drive, directly across the way. Two cars pull up in front of the same house as the van. A ramble of children jump out of the cars and excitedly push and shove each other, stomping into the empty house. It makes the boy watching smile, as he’s a single child. He always wanted a bunch of siblings.  
  A tall and rather slender lady climbs out from one car, and a man, wide, and even taller than her, climbs from the other.  
“Remember guys, Tyler gets the biggest room”, the lady calls and then walks into the open door of the house.  
  The hawk-haired boy notices there’s one person left in one of the cars. It’s a little difficult to see clearly through the quarter-tinted windows, but it looks like a young man maybe, like him, he observes. He wonders why he’s just sitting there, blank-faced, with what looks like chunky headphones perched on his head. The boy in the car crosses his arms over his chest, but brings one of his hands up to his face, eyes closed and brows scrunched, pinching at the bridge of his nose. He can’t help but notice the boy in the car is shifting and twitching a little. He watches as the boy brings his arms down, takes a breath deep enough to move his shoulders up and down.  
  He realises he’s been standing there for at least a good minute, observing this new family’s antics, and knows he needs to get going. He opens the door of his second hand Audi TT. It may be second hand, and deep purple - which he still gets teased for at school but he doesn’t care cause he’s always loved purple - but it’s fast and fairly flash so he loves his car. He chucks his backpack and a deep red zip-up onto the passenger seat and goes to place a pair of sunglasses on his face, before he gets distracted again.  
  The door of the car across the way swings open with a squeak, its quiet from where he’s standing, and out emerges the boy that was sitting in the car. The curly haired boy is taken-aback by how the other boy looks. Tall, which isn’t much of a surprise from the size of who he presumed was his Mother and Father. But that wasn’t what surprised him. He felt familiar.  
  He was very broad at the shoulders, muscular at the arms and slender at the waist - the typical ‘V’ shaped athletic type. This was accentuated by the dusty-rose coloured (very) slim fit, longline hoody, now adorned with the same set of headphones around the neck of the boy. He can’t help but focus on the hoody that moves when when the boy moves. It grips onto every muscle and movement of the tall boy across the way.  
  His eyes shift to the boys face, which he can only currently see half of, but sees that he has a long but perfect nose. The light bounces beautifully off of his cheekbones and chin and his angled jaw is tense leading into a long neck. It’s like god himself hand chiselled the boys features.  
  He doesn’t understand why his gaze is so drawn to him.  
The boy catches a glimpse of the other, watching curiously by his open car and throws him a kind but shy side smile as he walks away from the car. His eyes were puffed and as pink as his jumper.  
“Joshua?!”. The boy jumps and his fixation is disturbed by the muffled shouting from inside his house. He looks up to see his mom’s head and a paper bag dangling from the middle floor window.  
“Joshua sweetie, you left your lunch in the kitchen”.  
  He shoots his eyes to the boy, who looks to be chuckling with amusement as he enters the house.  
He hates being called Joshua but his Mother insists. Mortified, he catches the small paper sack of food, he shakes his head in disbelief as he mumbles a “thanks” and climbs into the car.


	2. Chapter 2

The boy was sitting in the back of his Mom’s car, chewing on the arm-cuff of his favourite comfy pink jumper, attempting not to let his stinging eyes fill up for the ninety-seventh time this trip. They were moving, again. It wasn’t all bad this time as they were in fact, moving back to where he was born, Columbus, Ohio, so he remembered the area, in parts, from his kidult-hood. “This is the last time Tyler, we promise”, his Mom tries to reassure from the drivers seat. “You said that last time”, he spat with venom, “and the time before”, this time mumbling as he slouches into his seat. He puts his big headphones on, his will failing and the tears well up again.

His mum sighed looking and feeling guilty for doing this to him again. Since Tyler was seven, his Mother and Father had uprooted the family a staggering eleven other times, this being the twelfth, for various reasons; some being for Tyler’s behaviour - if you’d call mental health issues and breakdowns bad behaviour - and others due to his dads job -he was a basketball coach - and certain gob-smacking rumours that just made everything worse. A stay at one particular house was the worst. It lasted an entire 2 months before his father was let go from the coaching job at the local high school, under allegations of misconduct with a young girl at the school - if you catch the drift. The charges were dropped after it was found the girl was lying, but the damage had been done and he had already been let go.  They moved again to escape the towns drama.

He had been to seven different schools in all and he hated all of them! Even though he managed to get into all of the schools basketball teams, thanks to his Dad, he never really made any significant friends. And now being seventeen, he didn’t remember much at all from his life before all of the stress and the upset. Ten whole years of it had warped his mind, practically split it in half, but it was hard to treat because his true episodes didn’t happen often. But when they did, all hell broke loose, and Tyler barely remembered the things that happened during. He wasn’t proud of how he was, he didn’t tell a lot of people but he vowed to himself that he was going to come to terms with the way he was and stop being so ashamed of himself.

“We’re here sweetie”, he hears his mum call to him through his headphones, as they pull up to their new home. Tyler scoffs.

 ** _Home. Yeah, for how long this time?_** He winces at the voice in his head. 

Tyler’s mum climbs out of the car, her legs getting caught, she’s far too tall for the car she’s driving. Tyler, removing his headphones, watches her as she walks to greet one of the moving-van men whilst she gestures to their belongings in the van. All of Tyler’s siblings stampede out of his dads car and run into the house. Their mother cutting herself off from talking to the man.

“Remember guys, Tyler gets the biggest room”, she shouts after them before she excuses herself and follows them in. Tyler lets himself indulge in a brief smug smile before folding his arms and pinching at the bridge of his nose to try and stump the migraine building behind his skull. He keeps it there for a moment and lets his mind wander to what he thinks the high school will be like. He wonders if anyone will even remotely take an interest in being his friend this time.

_**Probably not.** _

“Shut up”, he mumbles angrily to himself. Tyler takes a huge deep breath and drops his arms to look at the new house. He reaches for the handle and swings the door open. He cringes at the loud rust-induced creek that comes from the hinges of the car door. Stepping out, he breathes in the warm summer air lifting his head as he turns, to feel the sun on the side of his face.

As he steps from the car he notices a boy, lingering at his open car across the road, looking his way. He was fairly tall, the boy, but not as tall as Tyler. He had ashen, dark curls cut into a hawked style. He was built, with particularly large shoulders and upper arms; that he could plainly see due to the boys black tank with the dropped arm-holes. The tank was casually exposing the sides of the boys rather toned torso. His jeans were tight in every way and ripped across the knee and lower thigh. On his feet were a pair of worn-in maroon Dr. Marten boots, his jeans rolled up to expose the laces. In his grasp was a backpack of sorts and a zip-up that matched his boots perfectly.

It startled Tyler a little but not enough to let on. He thought it strange that he was being watched by this boy, but he shoots him a small smile, just putting it down to curiosity, before walking toward the house.

A muffled “Joshua...”, catches his attention from inside the house across the way. As he looks back over he notices the boy looks rather embarrassed to be called out by this full name. The boy shoots another glance towards Tyler, making him chuckle to himself a little before he lets the door of the house swallow him.

Tyler jogs both flights of the stairs, two steps at a time. His new house has three floors and a large basement room. Tyler’s room is pretty much the entirety of the top floor which he’s very glad about as he needs his space, and a fair bit of it. With his mental health issues and a serious case of claustrophobia, he wouldn’t be happy with anything less. Not that he was ever happy.

It’s was chronic, his depression. His last breakdown left him suicidal and he had the scars to prove it; yet another reason for a house move. The doctors he had said it was some form of schizo-affective disorder, a mix of schizophrenic and bipolar symptoms. The severity of his condition was still uncertain, but the medication and therapy seemed to be helping. He was on the mend, but he knew he’d never be fully cured, or fully happy.

His room was plain and large, with a balcony-type window looking out the side of the roof.

 _**It’s a shit hole.**_ He gives a rather blasé nod in agreement with his brain.

_I’ve had worse._

He dumps himself on his already set-up bed and sighs up at the roof-ceiling. He is dreading the day ahead. Whilst his Mother and Father unload the truck and their cars of the rest of the family’s belongings, Tyler will be heading to school to settle in before starting senior year after summer break. He huffs again before sitting up and rubbing his face, his hands already clammy and shaking with the nerves.

**_You’re gonna make a fool of yourself, boy. Everyone will know you’re a freak._ **

“Stop it”, he forces through his teeth. He drops his arms and hauls himself up to head back downstairs, before he starts again. Before heading out the door again he grabs his school bag he packed the night before. He bounces down each step and finds his Mom, already bickering with his Father. She stops nagging abruptly and looks over when she notices Tyler standing there.

“I-I er...”, he starts. He shuts his eyes and brings his hand up to pinch his nose again while he shifts uncomfortably in his spot. He takes a breath and drops his hand to look at his parents,

“I’m heading o-out to find school”, he forces out as confidently as he can, stretching a false smile onto his face.

“Aw, Tyler, I can take you if you like?”, she offers whist she makes her way to him. She places her hand on the side of his left arm, and rubs her thumb reassuringly. He hesitates, considering his options. He hates walking on his own when he doesn’t know where he’s going, he just starts panicking.

**_Do it, you hate new places._ **

_But she has enough on her plate, stop being so fucking selfish._

**_But you are selfish, boy. You’re a fucking burden on your whole family._ **

_Shut up!_

“No, I’ll be okay”, but he sees the way she’s looking at him, unsure. “I.. I have to figure it out sooner or later, don’t I?”, he jokes a little with his mom, “besides, you guys have a lot to do”, he waves his hands around softly, gesturing to the general ficinity of the house and places his right hand on top of hers on his arm, which wipes the concern straight from his Mom’s face, replaced with an adoring smile. He chats a little with his Mom and Dad for a short moment, says his goodbyes and heads off.

He notices the boy from across the way, and his purple car was gone, which to his surprise he was a little disappointed at. It made him wonder if ‘Joshua’ was in his high school. He wondered if he played basketball too, with him being particularly athletic-looking, though his choice in clothing made Tyler second guess that thought and consider other stereotypes. An ‘art freak’ maybe? No. Music? Musicians tend to dress more alternative.

_Those jeans!_

He then wondered, as he was walking down his street, why the hell he was thinking about this boy!

**_Got a crush have we, boy?_ **

“Shut up, Blurry”, he snapped, loud enough for a lady passing to look at him strangely. Tyler looked round at the lady, now behind him, to find she was still looking at him, and she shot back round when she knew she’d been caught staring. He turned back himself, and huffed in dismay.

**_See. You’re a freak aren’t you, boy? Even she could see it._ **

_Stop it._

**_Not until you say it._ **

“Go away Blurry!”, he whisper-shouted back at himself.

 ** _Not..Until.. You say it._** Blurry was sniggering now, the sound wet with venom.

Tyler stopped. He had this sudden urge to just claw at his face. He wanted it to stop. To be left alone. He fought the compulsion and sighed in defeat. Blurry was waiting now. Tyler could visualise the sick sneer on the monsters face. Blurry knew Tyler would give in.

 ** _Say it._** Tyler sighed again.

“I’m a freak”, he mumbled, miserable. He tried not to let the tears well up, but his vision was blurring with the liquid brimming at his eyelids. He pulled the headphones from around his neck again, popped them onto his ears, pulled his hood up over them and continued on with his walk.


	3. Chapter 3

Stopping at a set of lights, Josh sees a familiar coloured hoodie pass his window. He bobs his head down to try and catch the persons face but they’re too tall to be seen from under the Audi’s roof. Being stuck at the lights, however, gave Josh the chance to let the person come into sight.

The hooded character stoped at a street corner and turned his head right to check for oncoming traffic, revealing the same chiseled features that Josh spotted earlier that morning. He finds himself grinning to himself. He taps his fingers impatiently, staring at the traffic lights, willing them to change so he can catch up with the boy.

_Do I offer him a ride? I don’t even know where he’s going.._

“I wonder..”, Josh says to himself. Green light, and Josh revs the engine before burning away from the lights. He catches up to the pink hoody just a couple of seconds later and pulls over, giving the horn a sharp but brief beep. He checks behind him in his rear view for any cars coming up behind. None yet.

Tyler jumps out of his skin when he hears the strangers car horn right next to him. It was loud enough to hear even through his music. He hesitates but de-hoods his head and pulls off his headphones. He bends to peer into the passenger side window when he realises the beep was indeed intended for him. Once he got over his little heart attack, he was pleasantly surprised to see the same boy he’d seen that morning, the one watching him from across the road. He just looked at the boy that was smiling at him through the car window.

“Are you heading to Worthington?”, the boy called over to Tyler. Tyler looked down toward his feet for a second, then nodded, his eyes still on his toes. He looked back up to the shadowed, hawk-haired boys face to smile at him and found he was grinning back at him like an excited child. He felt his cheeks flush with intense heat and looked back down at the floor with embarrassment. He jumped a little when he saw the boy reach over and swing open the door of the Audi, inviting him in. He stared for a second, not quite sure whether to take the boys offer.

“It’s okay”, he smiled, “I’m not gonna kidnap you. I go to Worthington too”. He smacked the leather of the passenger seat. Tyler looked around at his surroundings, before looking back at the boy in the car. He decided it was safe enough to take up the offer. He took a deep breath and stepped to the car. He ducked himself down into the leather seat next to the other boy feeling a little weird being this close to him, him being a stranger. However now, getting a clearer look at the boys face something came over him.

He saw himself, his younger self, and another young curly-haired boy running around in the road where his first house was, the house he still considers home. He must have been about six, just before his first house move of so many, before the ten-year living nightmare started. His vision was warped and clouded, like a dream. His breathing slowed and a wave of peace came over him when he realised. I know this boy. He could hear the boy speaking to him, but not what he was saying. It took a moment to come back round, and suddenly the haze was gone. Everything was clear once more.

“.. Dude?”, the other boy questioned, “You okay?”. His eyebrows furrowed with mild concern. Tyler breathed. There was no question, it was him, the boy in his flashback.

“Josh?” Josh’s eyebrows shot up briefly, surprised, and furrowed again with confusion.

“Uh, yeah? How do y..”.

“It’s me, Tyler. Tyler Joseph. We used to live in Clintonville together, you were a few doors down from me”, he half shouted, excited.

He watched the realisation wash over Josh’s face, his mouth hanging open in amazement. It very quickly morphed into a huge grin before he was practically shouting too.

“Whaaaat?! Ahh, no way dude! Seriously?” Tyler, still smiling, just nodded, returning to his more shy and reserved self. “Aw man this is crazy”, Josh squealed, bouncing in his seat, throwing one of his hands on his forehead in disbelief.

Just then another car honked behind them. They got that distracted that Josh forgot to keep a look out. “Shit. Quick close the door”, he pointed to the door on Tyler’s side.

He looked into his rear mirror and put his hand up to apologise to the person behind. Tyler obeyed and pulled the door slamming it shut just a little too hard. He squeezed his eyes shut, cringing at his little mistake. “

Hey man, careful with my baby, she’s sensitive”, Josh kidded with Tyler as he revved and sped away down the street. Tyler’s cheeks flushed again with sheer embarrassment. He wanted to die!

**_That’s right Tyler, you make a complete fool out of yourself just minutes after you find your childhood best friend after ten years of no contact. You fucking idiot. No wonder people never stick around._ **

His eyes pricked and stung as he slumped in his seat. He looked out of the window to avoid his old friends gaze. It didn’t work. Josh immediately felt the atmosphere switch and looked over to Tyler.

“Hey man, y’alright?”, Josh asked glancing to his right, looking a bit concerned for his passenger. Tyler just nodded without looking back at Josh, not wanting him to see his tearful eyes. “You’re a little sensitive too, huh?”. He nodded again.

He jumped a little when he felt a hand pat his left knee a couple times. He looked down to see Josh’s hand lingering there for a brief moment before making eye contact with the other boy. His heart skipped at the contact. It jumped right into his throat when Josh returned the glance, before Josh then looked down at his own hand and pulled it back awkwardly, clearing his throat. Tyler noticed the curly haired boy beside him shift and minutely shake his head. He made a little scowl, as if to internally cuss himself at his own stupidity. He knew that face all too well, as he does it do himself multiple times a day. Josh looked back over to him and shot Tyler an almost apologetic smile, and Tyler smiled back.

“It’s alright, I was just messing with you”. Tyler nodded again, a littler happier this time with being reassured that he hadn’t been as stupid as he thought. “You never used to be this shy, man. I remember you used to be the boisterous one”, he half questioned Tyler, looking expectant between him and the road.

Tyler looked down at his legs, a tuft on the hem of his hoody suddenly becoming the most interesting thing on the planet, he mustered up a reply. “Well, moving twelve times in ten years will do that to you. Takes its toll, y’know?”, he explained. He shocked himself with how easily he was truthful with the boy.

“Twelve times?!”, Josh was gobsmacked, “why so many times?” Tyler deliberated between making an excuse or telling the truth.

“Well”, he started. He was still playing with the tuft on his pink jumper, “I-It’s a few reasons really, different each time..” He looked up to see if Josh would let him leave it at at that, but he just looked even more curious now. He wondered whether it was worth the risk of telling him about how messed up he was.

**_He’ll drop you like a hat when he finds out. You’re no one to him, boy. Just a pathetic whimpering idiot._ **

_Then why is he being nice to me?_

**_He’s probably just using you. Think about it. He never bothered to find you when you left, why would he bother now?_** Tyler frowned to himself. He could feel blurry fogging up his brain, sinking his claws into his mind, attempting to take hold. It made him shudder.

He glanced over to Josh who was still looking expectant, half I focused on him and half on driving. He looked back down again to play with the tuft he’d found earlier. Once again he’d given in to Blurry. Josh realised he was pushing the boy too far, and let it go.

“Its alright dude. Story for another time?”, he suggests, receiving an appreciative nod from the boy in pink. “Listen, I don’t mind driving you there and back from school, I’m driving myself anyways and you only live across the way. Saves you walking on your own”, he offers to Tyler, who’s face lights up at the suggestion.

“Er, Y-yeah, that would be great!”.

Josh turns right, slowly, around a rather sharp corner. Tyler notices a large red sign with big, bold, gold lettering stating ‘THOMAS WORTHINGTON CHRISTIAN HIGH SCHOOL’, over the top of the metal arched entrance. The entrance led to a long driveway that opened up into a huge slanted car park, with enough spaces for at least a good third of the students to park their cars. Worthington wasn’t a huge school, it’s legal capacity being eight-hundred-and-fifty students, but it was big enough for Tyler to go rigid when he saw other students swarming toward the front entrance of the school. His chest grew tight and he became increasingly breathless the closer they came to the school building.

Josh was too focused on winding round the parking lot, combing the place for a spot. He finally found one about four rows back from the school. He popped the Audi in reverse and slid into the space in one easy move, taking his keys straight out of the ignition when he was done.

He looked over to see Tyler like stone, grey in the face. He looked like he was about to throw up. Josh became worried when he realised that the boy wasn’t even breathing.

“Dude,” he placed a hand on his left arm, “dude, come on, breathe!”, he said, shaking him a little this time. Tyler’s empty, unblinking eyes shifted to Josh but didn’t focus. He still wasn’t breathing. Josh was becoming increasingly worried that Tyler might pass out.

“Tyler,” he addressed him softly, now putting one of his hands half on the side of his neck under his ear, and half coming into the boys cheek. He was freezing cold. He seatrched for any sign of life in his eyes.

“Tyler, look at me. You need to breathe, yeah?”. Josh was calm in his voice, but his brain was racing at what to do about Tyler’s distressed state. It took a moment, but Tyler let out a massive breath that practically erupted from his mouth and gasped for oxygen. Some colour started to return to the boys pasty face. He spluttered and coughed a little, his breathing now quickening, very quickly turning into hyperventilation. His head swam with terror, he felt like he was drowning.

**_They’re gonna find out Tyler. They’re gonna find out that you’re a freak. No one will talk to you. You may look like a jock but really you’re a snivelling little shit. You won’t exist to them unless they’re using you as a punchbag. They’re gonna beat the shit out of you, boy, and you know it! You’re gonna fail at everything. You can’t do this._ **

His brain felt like it was on fire.

“ I.. I c-can’t do this!”, he squeaked, “I can’t d..”, he gripped onto the first thing his hand could find, which happened to be the baggy drop-vest that Josh was sporting. Josh looked down to the boys hand turning white around a handful of his top and felt a wave of pure sorrow wash over him as he looked back up to his panicked face. This boy was terrified! He took a deep breath.

“Tyler look at me. I’m gonna be with you. I’ll get a pass to walk you to your classes, you can sit with me and my friends at lunch,” he locked eyes with the boy to reassure him of what he was saying, “You’re not gonna be alone, okay? Just breathe.”

His thumb instinctively stroked the side of the boys face. For some reason he felt very protective of him. The boy looked at Josh, his breathing gradually slowing until it was at a fairly normal pace. His grip loosened from around the fist of vest he was gripping into. He started blinking again and his eyes darted around the inside of the car when it dawned on him, Josh was touching his face.

They stayed like that for what felt like an eternity. As Tyler calmed he was now taking in Josh’s face. His disheveled, loose curls dropping over his forehead, just about touching his thick but tame brows. A blanket of long, dark eyelashes adorned the lids of his silky mocha eyes. He was wearing a little bit of red eyeshadow under his bottom lashes, and a thin smokey layer of black liner all the way round. His nose was on the bigger side, but not disproportionately so. It wasn’t askew or knobbly. It allowed Tyler’s eyes to slide down to his plump, rosy lips that were currently parted, showing the tips of his pearly white teeth. His skin was beautiful. He didn’t seem to suffer from spots or acne, like so many other teenage boys. It was perfectly clear and it was dewy from the heat that day. Until now Tyler hadn’t realised how truly handsome the other boy was.

Compulsion, and slight confusion led him to raise his hand to touch Josh’s, still comforting him on the side of his face. Josh seemed startled at this and pulled it away, making Tyler jump.

“I’m sorry, I..!”

“It’s.. it’s okay”, Josh half laughed, and smiled at Tyler, looking quite shy himself now, cheeks flushed, making Tyler smile back. They both cracked into a short awkward laughter. Josh looked at the clock on the car dash board.

8:31am.

“We’ve got about twenty minutes until count. Are you ready? We can go and get your timetable and sign you up for your lunch schedule. I’ll put you down for the same as mine?”. He looked back at Tyler. He saw the boy start to look panicked again.

“I’ll be right by your side”, he reiterated to him. Still looking a little scared, Tyler took a deep breath and nodded to Josh. Josh smiled back to him and reached for his car door, swinging it open nearly hitting the car next to his. Tyler followed suit and opened the door on this side. He stepped out of the car, looking around for a moment, taking in the scene in front of him. He suddenly noticed that he had already caught the attention of some of the students. Some of the Jock boys were gawking from the outdoor basketball enclosure. One in particular tapping at another boy and gesturing over to Tyler with a lifting of the chin in his direction making the other boy look too. No doubt Tyler would be meeting them face to face sooner rather than later. He knew his dad had probably already gotten him onto the basketball team.

A group of three girls were giggling to themselves when they spotted Tyler look over at them as they walked past. He furrowed his brows in confusion, looking back over to Josh for answers. Josh looked at Tyler with amusement over how oblivious he was to the situation.

“What?”, Tyler started to Josh, “what is it?”.

“Well you look like a typical jock-type Tyler, that’s why they’re showing interest”,  he explains, gesturing over to the basketball enclosure. “They’re also probably wondering why you’re hanging out with a punk”, he points to himself before flashing him a charming, menacing grin. “And the girls.. well, do I really have to spell it out for you?”, the boy smirked, still amused.

Tyler just stared at him, still acting stumped. Josh’s head slumps down, shaking in disbelief. He’s laughing now at how unconscious Tyler is to it all.

“You’re cute Tyler”, he bluntly states as he picks his head back up, “uh..to them I mean”, he backtracks when he sees Tyler’s eyebrows fly up at his comment. Josh shifts on the spot, a little embarrassed and frankly quite surprised with himself at the statement that just flew out of his mouth.

Tyler grins at Josh realising what this may mean for him.

_I might just have a chance here._

He looks round to the school and takes a big breath, taking that first brave step toward the building, Josh catching up to him, backpack and zip-up in hand. Josh swings his bag round to throw it on his back, accidentally smacking it into a passer-by as he does.

“Watch it, Dun”, Tyler hears from behind him. He turns in time to witness another young man, as tall as Josh but a lot wider, shove the boy hard enough he flies back at least three or four steps. Brendon Urie. The most popular boy in school. Also the biggest asshole. 

_What the f.._

It sparks something in Tyler. A heat in his stomach rises into his chest, forcing the boy forward. This had happened before. When he gets angry, not only does Tyler flip like a switch, he gains this uncontrollable energy, a strength that comes from nowhere. Before Josh knows, he sees Tyler lunge forward at the stranger. A glint of something flashes in the boys eyes, a dangerous aggression he’s never seen, especially in someone so timid.

Josh watches in amazement as the other boy shoves Brendon so hard it sends him flying backward into another students car, his thud setting off a screeching car alarm. Tyler’s eyes briefly dart to Josh, and back again to Brendon. They are demonic with anger, as he shouts to the boy he’s just thrown across the parking lot. A crowd is forming, curious over the the new boy daring to cross Brendon Urie of all people. Josh watches in awe, his mouth hanging a-gape.

“Touch him again!..”, he challenged Brendon, pointing down at him aggressively.

Brendon looks up and scraped himself off the floor of the lot, holding his back in discomfort.

“You fucking freak”, Brendon sneers to the boy.

**_Told you._ **

It ignites Tyler again. He starts at Brendon, being stopped in his tracks this time by Josh. He thrashes in Josh’s grasp once, Josh catching the look in his eyes again. Feral. He swears to god he could see specks of red swimming in his deep, chocolate eyes. It was amazingly terrifying. Tyler relinquishes himself from his friends hold and turns to walk away.

Josh stays for a moment, locking eyes with Brendon, both still in shock of what just happened, before jogging to catch up to the boy.

“This isn’t over psycho!” Brendon calls across the lot after the new boy. Tyler doesn’t seem to even hear him.

Tyler rounds a corner of the building, out of sight of the gawking students. He holds his forehead in his hands as salty wetness fills his eyes. Just as he starts freaking out Josh pops round the same corner to find him hyperventilating again. Josh watches him, wide-eyed.

“Dude. Where the fuck did that come from?”, he practically laughs out, his hands out, still in complete shock at what he’d just witnessed.

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t m-mean to, I.. he just pushed you and I snapped”, he stuttered through his tears, his head falling into his shaking hands.

“Why are you apologising to me? Dude, that was amazing! You’re so fucking strong!”.

Tyler looked up at Josh in shock. He thought he would be freaking out at his outburst. He thought he’d see that and leave. Everyone else had once they witnessed what he was capable of. He wiped away the tears that had now fallen onto his cheeks. He was just staring at Josh. He didn’t know what to say to him. Josh flashed that charming smile at him.

“Tyler, you just saved my ass!”, he said while Tyler let out a little laugh of relief. Then Josh’s face dropped into concern. “You do realise though, Brendon’s gonna be gunning for you now. If he doesn’t ‘show you who’s boss’ or whatever ”, he rolled his eyes as he said this, “people aren’t gonna take him seriously. He has a rep to uphold”.

Tyler gulped. He looked at his friend realising what he’s caused. Brendon was after him. He throws his head back squeezing his eyes shut.

“Shit!”, he half shouts, cursing himself for his reckless behaviour. The first school bell sounded.

8:40am.

Tyler jumped at the sound of the high pitched ring, warning them that they had ten minutes to get to their count room.  

“Come on, we need to get your timetable and get to count”. Tyler nodded in response and returned round the corner to the parking lot. He notices even more students looking at him now. He’s unsure whether it’s because he’s new or because of the scene he’d just caused a few minutes earlier.


	4. Chapter 4

Josh holds the door for Tyler, who slinks in from behind him. He leads Tyler over to the front desk where a blonde lady who looked to be in her early thirties, looks up from her papers. She was very pretty, hair pushed back in a tight bun and a pair of glasses perched half way down her nose. 

“Ah you must be Tyler Joseph!”, she chirped toward the boy. He gave her a little shy smile and looked over to Josh. It was the look on Tyler’s face that made him decide to do the talking. 

“Good morning Mrs. Miller,” he shot his charming smile her way and leaned toward her, hand resting on the desk, “this is my good friend Tyler, he’s settling into his classes before senior year. I told him I would walk him to his classes the first few days, he was really panicking earlier,” he explained to Mrs. Miller, who shoots him a sympathetic glance, “Would you possibly be able to sort a pass out for me so I don’t get in trouble with my teachers?”.

Josh was still leaning in to Mrs. Millers desk, keeping a rather intense eye contact. It made Tyler watch in disbelief with how Josh was acting.

_Is he flirting with the secretary?_

His stomach turned. For some reason he found he didn’t like that at all. But whatever Josh was doing, it seemed to work. She broke the eye contact, blinking and shaking her head a little, as if to try and shake off Josh’s flirtatious influence. 

“Um.. I will have to call the headmaster, you know I don’t have the authority to just hand out passes”, she explained, giving Josh an amused disapproving look. Josh just laughed to himself. “Give me a moment, and I’ll explain the situation to Mr. Turner.” She held a finger up as she said this and rolled her chair over to the office telephone. 

Josh turned and stepped toward Tyler who flushed when he saw that Josh still had that intensely charming smile spread across his face. The boy was dripping with charisma and seemed to relish in his control over the lady. He winked at Tyler as he walked over to him. He now understood how Mrs. Miller was so easily swayed, his cheeks we’re on fire and he became very hot as Josh grew closer to him. 

_What is going on with you today?_

Tyler shook his head at himself and shot him an impressed look, cheeks still rather red, and laughed softly toward Josh. 

“What?”, the boy laughed back.

“Just.. that”, Tyler gestures toward what had just happened, “how did you do that?”. Josh’s brow furrowed as he glanced back over at the busy secretary. 

“I don’t know”, he started, looking back toward Tyler, “I’ve just always been able to get my own way with people really. I don’t know how”, he explained, shoulders raised suggesting he genuinely didn’t know, but here was a mischievous look still in his eyes.

“Besides she’s a big flirt anyway...Oh!”, Josh popped, remembering about Tyler’s lunch schedule. Tyler followed Josh skipping over to the front desk. 

“Right I’m on lunch 2, which is lucky for you because Brendon is on lunch 3”, he looked up at Tyler, to which he nodded in agreement. 

He watched as he saw Josh scribble down his name in the lunch schedule and smiled at the boy when he turned to show him what he had done. 

Just then Mrs. Miller called them both over to the desk. 

“Righty-ho! I have cleared it with Mr. Turner that you will be Tyler’s room guide for the next three days. You’ll need this,” she handed Josh a blue, thick cardboard pass with the dates he was allowed to be excused late, and a stamp and signature at the bottom. Josh stepped forward to take the card from the lady, raising one arm behind Tyler’s back as he did. His hand settled just above the small of his back and tylers senses spiked at the contact. 

He was suddenly very aware of the punk boy beside him. Even when Josh had dropped his arm, all Tyler could focus on was the minute space between them, the pace of the shorter boys breath, how he radiated heat from his body and the smell of the cologne he had sprayed that morning. The sensations were so intoxicating, he didn’t even hear what Mrs. Miller had to say to him as she attempted to hand him his late pass, a timetable and a temporary work planner to last the rest of the school year, which was just under five weeks. 

He stared at the lady behind the desk, eyes completely lost. He felt drunk off of Josh. Josh took the items for him, and looked at Tyler, now pulling him over to the seating area of the front office, and sat his friend down, crouching in front of him. Tyler was still quiet, his mind adrift. 

He was brought back to reality when Josh clicks his fingers in front of his face. 

“Earth to Tyler?”, he jokes with the boy. 

Tyler blinked two or three times before he blushed down to his knees.

“Sorry, I got distracted”...  _by you._ He laughed softly at Josh. He saw Josh smile back at him before he looked to Tyler’s new timetable.

He was confused over this boy. Why was he so fixated with him. And why were they so comfortable one minute and so awkward the next. He felt tense yet relaxed. He’d never felt anything like this for anybody before. He knew he fancied boys, that was obvious to him from a young age, but he’d never actually crushed over a boy before. 

“Oh good!”, the other boy seemed pleased, “we have four classes together!”, he says to Tyler, grinning. Tyler’s thoughts were mixed. Four classes, good! But out of how many? Was it four in a day or four in a week? What ones were they? And how long were the classes? Josh could see the cogs turning. 

“Relax man. Look,” he pointed to the chart on the schedule slip, “there’s six lessons a day. Seven subjects are compulsory and are in ‘sets’. English, Math and Science 3 are every day. Then there’sReligious studies, Ethics, History USA, and business studies. They’re only once a week each. The rest of your lessons are taken by three choice classes. For me, music, further science and computer sciences. I know it’s a bit much at first, do you follow?”, Josh explained it pretty well. He was peering into Tyler’s eyes, observing his reactions. It was like he could see his soul. Tyler cleated his throat. 

“Y-yeah, that’s not too confusing.”, he answered.

“Good! Now I happen to be in middle set for everything except Science 3, which they always put new kids in at first, so lucky for you you’re with me 4 times a day, and for lunch. Depending on how clever you are you will either drop to lower set, stay in middle or go up to higher set next year”, the hawk-haired boy explained further. 

Tyler watches the way his face moves when he’s so passionately explaining everything to him.

“I see here you have music with me too!”, Josh seemed really happy about this. “I didn’t realise you played anything.”

“Um, yeah, it’s more of a hobby. I-I play bass and piano”, he smiled to Josh.

“Amazing! What were your other choices?”, he asks looking up to Tyler whom he finds staring at him intensely. It makes him flush a little. He winds up rubbing the back of his neck to try and break the tension. 

“Er, Physical sciences and Physical-Ed.”

“Ha, I knew it. You ARE a jock”. Josh states to him triumphantly. He nods to Josh.

“Yeah, I shoot hoops,” he explained shyly, “no doubt my dads already been in contact about me being on the team.” Looking away from Josh’s face. Josh notices a slight sadness as the other boy tells him this.

“You’re already on the team?”, he pushes. 

Tyler is now looking at the floor, not wanting to look at Josh’s reaction. 

“Yeah.. M-my dad is a basketball coach. He.. he works at Olentangy, but no doubt he will have pulled some strings”, he peers up to the other boy, who looks a little confused and a little impressed at the same time. He says nothing, which gives Tyler the push to say more.

“I play point. I was spotted last year by the board as a possible candidate for a scholarship to Otterbein, I’ll find out the start of next year if I have a true offer. My dads always seen my gift for hoops but he been on me even harder ever since then to up my game.”

Josh was stunned! It’s the most he’d heard the boy willingly say about himself since he’d met him (again) earlier that morning.

The second and final bell sounds, telling them they should already be in their rooms. Josh’s head perks up when he hears it, then looks back to Tyler. 

“Well, we best get you to count! You’re in room A02, just a few down from me”, he tells him as he stands back up from crouching in front of a sitting Tyler. He gestures for Tyler to follow, and he does. They both thank Mrs. Miller for her help, who wished Tyler the best of luck for his first day and the exit the front office into the main building. 

They walk in comfortable silence down the wide halls, while Josh leads Tyler to his count room. Most of the other students had already made it to count so their journey was uninterrupted. He stops at a room to their left about half way Dow one particular row of classrooms. Josh turns to him with a reassuring smile and nods to a door labelled A02. 

“Here we go”, the boy chirps to Tyler. Tyler looked from Josh’s face to the door, and reaches for the handle. He took a deep breath and pushed the door. 

_Here we go._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your support already guys!  
> Sorry for the messing around with chapters, the formatting on here got a bit confused and duplicated chapters so if you were confused over that I do apologise!  
> I’m going to try and post every 2 or 3 days to keep the flow going.  
> If there’s anything you’d really want me to include then suggest it in the comments section.
> 
> Mucho love <3

Josh wondered how his friend was coping without him. From what he had already seen that day, he was a little confused by Tyler. There was the fact that he found himself acting completely different around him, I mean, he must have smiled a hundred times this morning already, and he couldn’t stop looking at him! He kept noticing Tyler blushing when he looked at him too, which made him do the same. He felt like he still knew him after all the years apart, but he was also so far removed from the Tyler that he knew as a kid; who was so confident and wacky.

But there was also something off about the boy. Not in a mean or malicious manor, more he noticed he was a little unstable. He could understand that Tyler would have been a nervous wreck today, with starting a new school, but still. The way he reacted to Brendon in the parking lot wasn’t wacky, it was fucking nuts! It was indeed impressive, but it was way out of order, that was just fact. But Josh couldn’t help thinking about just how quickly the ordeal happened and how instantaneous Tyler snapped when Brendon had shoved him. The absolute inhuman speed in which he moved. The almost-murderous look in his eyes. There was something about the his reaction and how protective Tyler became of Josh when the older boy dared to touch him, that made him feel special. It made his chest flutter. Josh was ripped away from his thoughts by the sound of two other boys, his friends Andy Hurley and Pete Wentz, gossiping. Andy turns to Josh.

“You were there weren’t you?” He asked Josh. Josh didn’t have a clue of what he was talking about and gets distracted by the other boy, Pete, who lets out an excited gasp as he turns round to face him too.

“Um.. What?”, he questions, confused.

“Come on Josh, that new kid. You were there when he sent that Brendon guy flying, yeah?”

“Oh.. yeah I was”, he confirms for the boy. 

Andy waited expectantly, quickly getting impatient when he realised Josh needed some prompting.

“Well?..” he prodded Josh in the arm playfully.

“Well what?”

“What happened?!” Josh could see his friend was desperate for the juicy details and gave in after a moment of consideration...

“..next thing I know Brendon’s flying about ten feet backward into the car”, Josh finishes, watching his friends excited brains soak up the information like sponges. By now he had attracted half of the class surrounding his singular desk. 

“Wow..”, Pete starts.

“I know, it was crazy. But you should have seen his face. He looked feral, he looked like he was gonna kill him. It was kind of amazing”.

“..what a fucking psycho!”, Pete, again. 

“Don’t..”, he glared at Pete.” Anyway, I wouldn’t say that to him, he’ll probably have your head”.

“So this new kid turns up out of nowhere that you just so happen to know from when you were a smol bean, and he just so happens to move in across the way from you AND end up in the same school you just so happen to go to? Kind of weird, don’t you think?”, Andy urged.

Josh hummed in agreement. “He’s different though, he’s not the same Tyler I knew. He seems.. lost.”

Andy noticed how concerned and protective Josh seemed over the new boy and started teasing him.

“.. Awe I think Joshua Dunn is in love!”, he was now cackling, some of the other students overhearing and joining in. 

“Wha.. no!”, he punched Andy in the arm in objection, “he saved my ass, and I appreciate it. That’s it.”

“Yeah, saves your ass now so he can ruin it for you later, eh, Dun?”, some guy interjected, laughing and high five-ing his jock friend next to him. 

Josh gave him a sarcastic laugh, “, Yeah, I’m not gay. Neither is he, okay?”

..  _I think._

Andy cuts in, “To be fair Josh, have you not seen the bright pink hoody he’s wearing? What kind of straight teenage guy would willingly wear that to school if he wasn’t? Take that from an open homo”, he said pointing at himself.

Josh looks away angrily and slumps in his seat, attempting to ignore the laughing crowd now.

But he couldn’t help thinking about it. They were right. He had never met another straight male student who would willingly wear pink, for fear of the rumours spreading. He personally had nothing against gay people. Andy was gay. He didn’t give a shit. But he had witnessed how much ridicule he had been through over the past year of being ‘out’ and it was only just calming down. He worried for Tyler that if it was true, he would get ripped to shreds in a religious school. 

 

***

 

Tyler snuck into the classroom that Josh had shown him too. He was hoping to slide in, hand the teacher his late pass and pick a seat as far back in the class as he could. Obviously, this didn’t happen as the entire class of students became completely silent when he walked in. 

Already cringing, he made his way to the teachers desk, fumbling around with the ideas in his hand to find his pass.  The teacher looked it over, glanced back up at Tyler from her seat and popped the pen she had in her hand down onto the table top. 

“I’m Miss. Bell, I’m you’re count teacher. Im here to make sure you’re here on time for classes and ensure you are doing okay at school”, she explained to Tyler rather robotically, like she’s said it a thousand times. 

“At the end of the week you need to get one of your parents to sign your planner, to ensure they are aware of what homework you are assigned and that you’ve completed it all,” she said this as she rose from her seat, shifting the glasses from their nose, to the top of their head, whilst clearing a frog away from their throat. 

“Everybody, this is Tyler Joseph. As you can see he is a new student and will be settling into his classes before the change to the senior building after summer”, she told the rest of the class, “Mr. Joseph, I’ll make this fairly painless, all I want you to do is tell the class a couple of interesting facts about yourself before you find your seat”. 

Tyler stared at his count teacher in total shock. 

Of all the people to get to speak in front of the class, he was chosen, on his first day. Tyler scrambled his brain to come up with something, anything to say. He looks to the crowd of teenagers gawking up at him, already starting to look bored. He could see one girl toward the back of the class lean to her friend next to her and say something inaudible, while her friend looked back at her shocked. She then nodded to the shocked girl and leant back into her seat.

_Oh god they’re talking about me._

**_Yes. They’re gossiping about you, boy. You’d better think of something soon._ **

Flashed his eyes around the room, looking for anything that would give him an idea of what to say.

**_You’re making a complete fool of yourself. You’re a blubbering mess. They’re already deciding whether to reject you or not._ **

He could hear Blurry laughing in his head when his eyes met a familiar sight out to the window.  The basketball hoop. He mustered up his voice as best he could to say something.

“H-hi, I’m T-Tyler..”, he squeezed out of his lungs.

“Well we didn’t know that”, a boy sneered sarcastically, a good three rows back. The same girl as before turned to the boy and used the back of her hand to smack the boys arm with a giggling ‘shhh’, telling him to be quiet. Tyler’s face turned bright pink as he laughed awkwardly, trying to cover up being so obvious.

“Um.. I-I play point guard, shooting baskets..” he brought his hand up to rub the back of his head, turning to the teacher...

_Do I have to do this?_

**_The quicker you do the quicker it’s over with and the quicker you can stop looking like a moron Tyler.._ **

He turned back and dropped his hand before noticing the same girl toward the back of the class was smiling at him. When she saw him look she flashed a little grin and blushed, looking down at her hands on the desk.

“..Um, I-I also taught myself Bass-guitar and Piano last year.. Um.. yeah”, he finished. 

He didn’t know what else to say. The teacher gestured their hand forward to allow Tyler to find his seat. The only two seats free were one at the front..  nope .. and one right behind the girl at the back. Some of the other students watched him as he made his way up one of the isles to that seat. The girl smiled at him again as he passed her, and he gave a small shy smile back before dumping himself into the empty seat behind her. He felt comfortable at the back, hidden away from the immediate watch of the other students.  The girl almost immediately turned to look at Tyler, which startled him. He had already managed to pull his pink hood up over his head to try and hide himself further from the curious eyes of others. It didn’t work. 

“Hey”, the girl whispered, “I’m Jenna. Jenna Black, and this is Hayley”. Hayley just chose to smile at Tyler. Jenna offered her petite, porcelain hand forward for a more official greeting. He delicately gripped her hand with his much larger, much more tanned digit and gave one firm tug.

“Hi”, he smiled at her, “I’m guessing you know my name”, he darted a snarky look over to the boy next to Jenna, who happened to be looking at him too. It made the boy snort with laughter, which just annoyed Tyler even more. 

“Aw, just ignore Way. He’s a teddy bear really when you get to know him, Aren’t you Gerard?”, she turned the other way to look at the sarcastic boy from just a minute ago.

He blew her a mocking kiss, in which she jokingly retorted and she laughed pushing him gently. 

Tyler already liked Jenna, she seemed sweet. Hayley seemed alright, maybe a little shy, or just not that bothered. However, the same couldn’t be said for ‘Way’ or whatever his name was, but he’d only just met him. Maybe he did have a softer side, but for now he was going to keep his distance.

“Hey, is it true you shoved Brendon Urie in the car park before?”, Gerard almost accused him, an evil look in his eye, and he didn’t do so quietly either. The majority of the class went silent and looked toward the back of the class where the three were sitting. A cold wave of dread came over Tyler and Gerard was still grinning. 

“Um, yeah”, he confirmed with his eyes on his hands. He didn’t want to look at any of them when he admitted his rash actions. 

Jenna’s opinion was obvious, “Why would you do that, Tyler?”, she gasped. Tyler looked up almost apologetically to Jenna. Maybe she knew him well and didn’t like what he’d done. 

“..I-I was protecting my friend, Josh. Brendon shoved him for no reason and I just snapped. I hate bullies”, he quickly defended himself, looking angrily at Gerard. Gerard looked rather excited at the fact that his accusations were correct. 

“Wait, do you mean Josh Dun?”, Jenna asked again. 

He just nodded, now staring into space. He was only brought back to Gerard’s face when he let out quite a sexual “oufff” at Jenna’s question.

Tyler’s gut churned. This meant one thing, that Gerard fancied Josh. He found himself glaring at Gerard again. He felt an overwhelming urge to punch the boy in the face. He was gritting his teeth and Gerard could see it.

“Whaaat? You got a crush on Dun have you?”, Gerard patronised Tyler, lips pursed, talking to him like you would a baby, or your dog. Tyler kept glaring for a few seconds before relaxing his face and shaking his head in denial. 

“I’m guessing you have though, by your reaction”, he teased back. 

“H-yeah! Have you not seen his arms?” He asked, with a fake drooling sound afterward. Tyler found himself giggling with Gerard at this. Jenna smiled at Tyler, obviously glad that the tension between the two boys had subsided, at least for now.

“I’d jerk him off any day. I’d never get my hopes up though, he’s bone straight”. At that last comment Tyler gulped. It made him feel a little sick.

**_Oh don’t be stupid boy. Even if Dun did like dick, he wouldn’t touch your ugly mug with a shitty stick. He wouldn’t want someone like you. A talentless, worthless little shit._ **

_I’m not worthless._

**_Yes you are! You’re a waste of space._ **

Tyler brought his hands up to bury his head, his jaw still clenching. He gripped a section of his hair and pulled as hard as he could without making it too obvious. That’s what he did when Blurry attacked in public, he felt like it was easy enough to pretend he was fixing his hair or something. The pain killed Blurry’s comments for now, but he was still angry.  He was sick of his brain’s constant teasing and ridicule. But he couldn’t stop it. The only way to stop it would be to..

“You okay Tyler?”

The familiar voice pulled him back from his sinking dark thoughts. He played with his hair, pretending to fix it, and nodded at a concerned looking Jenner with a sad smile. Gerard wasn’t buying it, that was obvious with the way he was looking at Tyler, but Tyler did his best to ignore him.

Just then the bell sounded. Everyone grabbed their things and slowly congregated towards the hall. On the way out Jenna asked him what lunch he was taking. They happened to have the same slot and she cheerfully offered him to join them if he had nobody to sit with.

“I have Josh,” he explained and to her, “but maybe we can both come join?”.

Jenner smiled but there was an uneasy feeling to it. She didn’t seem sure. Tyler looked at her, confused. 

“Listen Tyler, one thing you’ll learn quickly about this school is that the cliques don’t mix. It’s silly I know, but you’ll get teased like crazy if you do. We’re preppy and a couple of us cheer. With you being a Jock, that works”, she explained to Tyler, “but jocks and music freaks don’t really associate with each other. I don’t like it myself, but you just have to go along with it, I’m sure you understand”, she said as she placed her hand on Tyler’s arm.  There was something about the way Jenna was talking that didn’t seem quite genuine, and it bugged him. It kind of felt like she was trying to recruit him. 

“Oh,” is all he could say to that. 

Saddened, he came to the classroom door, heading out into the hallway. The first thing he saw was the punk boy, leaning against the wall, directly across the way from Tyler’s count room. He had that perfectly charming smile plastered across his beautiful face which made Tyler forget his sadness. Josh walked over to the boy and offered him his hand in a way that sparked his memory. 

The boy was back in his old house, practicing with a young Josh the old secret handshake they used to do. It was that long it took them a good twenty-five seconds at a moderate speed and it took them weeks to perfect. 

He grabbed Josh’s hand and did the forehand-backhand move the handshake started with. He looked at Josh who seemed quite stunned. He gave Josh a tiny nod, to suggest they should carry on, and they started again.

Jenna and a few other people stared in horror, some in amazement as the two friends performed the twenty-odd different, consecutive moves that made up their old secret handshake. 

Off the bat, just like that. 

They cheered and jumped together in celebration.

“Ty, that was sick as frick!”, Josh squealed as he side-hugged his friend and Tyler realised something. Despite the nervousness and nearly causing a fight with an older boy, this was the first time he’d felt this happy in a couple of years.

It was then he decided, he didn’t care about the cliques and their rules, fuck them.

There was no way on this Earth he was going to lose Joshua Dun again. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this hasn’t come sooner.  
> I’ve been gigging a lot so been rather busy! 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

“You’re so beautiful Tyler”.

“Stop it, no I’m not”, the boy blushes. “I’m covered in scars”. He looks up at the hawk-haired boy straddled, topless on top of him.

Tyler was examining the other boys body, the light catching on every muscular lump and bump of his chest and stomach, making Tyler moan a little in excitement. He can’t contain himself with such beauty spilling himself on top of him. He blushes again when he sees Josh staring down at him intensely.

“True. But your scars are part of you Tyler. They make you who you are, but they don’t define you,” Josh purrs, “You are much more than those bad days. You chose to fight through the pain. That in itself is beautiful.” Tyler smiles that innocent little smile that Josh loves so much, cheeks still pink from embarrassment.

“You don’t see what I see, Tyler”. He shifts his weight onto his left arm, still straddling Tyler, and brings his right hand up to comb through his hair. He leans down now, his bare muscular chest touching Tyler’s, the gap closing between their bodies. The feel of Josh’s skin sets him on fire.

Their lips touch, just slight at first, the electricity stings like a prick of a needle. The nervous tension makes them both hesitate, before excitement forces them together, the rush making them grab at each other with a lustful urgency. Darkness takes them as their eyes close, leaving their bodies relying purely on touch. Their mouths crash together and their hands find each others faces. Tyler grasps at the skin on Josh’s jaw, then again lower, on the curve between his neck and his shoulder. The heat churns in his stomach and rises in an all too familiar way, giving him the strength to lift Josh, and push him back so they are both sitting upright on Tyler’s bed, Josh reciprocating by shifting himself back on the other boys legs.

Tyler stares at Josh with such intensity. Like a ravenous lion stalking it’s prey. The look drives Josh wild! They push their foreheads together sharing each other’s breaths, completely at peace.

“I lo ** _ve_** y ** _o_** u **_Tyler_**..”. The voice was deep and strange. It sent chills up Tyler’s spine and into the skin up his neck, making the hairs stand on end.

“Huh?”, he questions, his head comes back again to look at Josh, only to see that it wasn’t Josh.

He saw his own face, on Josh’s body, but it was not him. He did not see his own eyes. These eyes were deep red with blood and death and rage. His neck was dark and oozing, jet black sludge was dripping down onto his chest. It was growing, quickly spreading, conquering every inch of Josh’s body. Then suddenly with the speed of a cheetah, the others hands were pinning him back down on the bed.

“B-Blurry, wh.. how?”, Tyler spluttered, panicking like game trapped in a hunters snare.

It was on Tyler now, thick black tar crawling up his torso. Gluing them together in an inescapable hold. It burnt like lava, like the heat he feels in his chest when he is angry. Josh was no longer there with him, just Blurry, taking over Tyler’s body and mind like he always had done. He was laughing, cackling in full knowledge of his total control over Tyler’s life. Tyler writhed desperately, to no avail as Blurry’s lava engulfed his arms and snuck up and up, brimming at the edge of his throat.

“Blurry no..”, he pleaded with the monster, “please, d-don’t..”

Blurry just laughed again as Tyler could feel it reaching his jaw, threatening to creep around his lips in seconds, leaving him mute.

_This isn’t real..._

Tyler knew it was over if it was. He thrashed his body, humming wordlessly in one last feeble attempt to break away from Blurry’s grasp. He caught sight of his demon-self grinning murderously before the black tar took both of his eyes, leaving only his nose for breath and his ears to hear.

 ** _“Stay away from Josh, boy”_** he warned with a silky smooth purr, before his ears and nose were lost too.

 

* * *

 

Tyler jumps out of his skin back into consciousness and sits up in his bed with a freaked out screech. He peers round his large bedroom, the space around him still dark from the early hours, to search for any sign of an intruder, but he can’t see much in his jet black room. He reaches down, panicked, to his bare chest to check he is still himself and hadn’t been consumed by lava. Convinced, he reached for the lamp on his side table and flicks the switch.

As the dim, warm light filled the room, his murky, sleep-filled eyes greeted the space in front of him. Empty. Nothing, nobody there. He breathed a sigh of intense relief. He sat there, cross legged for a minute thinking about his dream. What the hell did it mean? It had totally freaked him out when he felt like he was completely consumed by Blurry. And what was happening before that.. well.

He became hot at the thought of Josh kissing him in his dream. It was obvious to Tyler that there was a little bit of a tension between them two but he didn’t realise he felt that way towards him. He’d always known he found boys attractive, but he was pretty sure he did with girls too. Turns out he found Josh Dun very attractive indeed.

He looked over to the digital alarm clock on his side table, wondering if he had time to go back to sleep for a bit or whether there was no point.

4:12am.

He has to be up at seven for school, so he still had time, however, looking around his room, his eyes landed on his piano leaning against the wall, still not set up. It was then he realised he hadn’t played since before the move. He chewed the inside of his mouth, contemplating.

“Fuck it,” he said to himself, hauling his body off the bed and over to the piano in the corner of his room.

He unfolded the stand and picked up his piano, and lay it across the top. After fiddling with wires and finding his headphones that were in his school bag, he sat, popping the headphones around his ears. He tickled the faux ivory for a moment, wondering to what song his fingers would take him to. He found himself at a song he was working on but hadn’t yet completed.

“Here I come, come to you, in the very clothes.

That I killed, killed you in and, now I know I’m alone.

I walk to you, rain falls from you.

Can you watch me, can you drown me.

Please.”

(Drown - No phun intended)

He remained there in his zone for a good couple of hours, keys at his hands. He stood a few times, to find his notepad and a pen and to pace and sit again whilst writing. The words flowed through him. Like waves they came and went and he would capture them with his harpoon pen. He would stop and play to make sure his words and phrases fit. He was startled when he heard his alarm scream from the other side of the room.

7:00am

He walked over to the side table and hit his alarm and it’s obnoxious sound quiet. Looking down, his iPhone was next to it and he pressed its home button to reveal he had gotten a text from Josh just a few minutes ago.

Josh:- Hey dude, you awake?

He smiled a little to himself. He always felt good when he was talking to Josh. He quickly typed a response.

Tyler:- Yeah man, have since like 4 x

Josh:- Ha I love that you put kisses 😂

Tyler blushed hard and typed back.

Tyler:- I put kisses to everyone! And it was one kiss.

Josh:- Aw. Thought I was special 😭

Tyler:- You are special Jishwa! You can have 2 kisses from now on xx

Josh:- Im okay with that 😅 If you were anyone else I would have punched you for calling me that!

Tyler:- That is now your name in my phone 😏

Jishwa:- Nooo!

Tyler laughed out. He could almost hear Josh saying that in his head.

Jishwa:- Fine. You’re now Tyjo 😎

Tyjo:- Yeah that’s sick xx

Jishwa:- How come you we’re up so early anyways?

Tyjo:- 😕

Jishwa:- Sup dude, you can tell me.

Tyler knew he couldn’t tell him about the dream. At least not about them two, the way they were. And the Blurry thing? It was far too soon to open that can of worms on Josh, but he didn’t wanna lie to him.

Tyjo:- Just had a nightmare. I was wide awake after so I played my piano and did some writing.

Jishwa:- You can call me if you’re dreams freak you out too much you know. I don’t mind what time it is.

Tyjo:- Thanks man. See you at 7:45?

Jishwa:- No worries, I’m always here for you. Yeah just walk over 😎

Tyler popped his phone on the side table, to hear it buzz again.

Jishwa:- Btw. You owe me 3 texts worth of kisses.

Tyler smiled wide at this. He loved the fact that Josh was so chill with his affections.

Tyjo:- xxxxxx

Jishwa:- 😘

His heart stalled like a car at the lights. He wasn’t expecting him to send anything back at all never mind that! He sat himself down on the bed letting his mind wander and think if Josh actually did like him back, before his head was invaded with an all too familiar sound.

_**Don’t be so stupid, gay boy! Josh doesn’t like boys does he? He definitely doesn’t like confused, psycho little twinks like you. Fucking homo. You make me sick!**_

“But you don’t know that, he might like boys and just doesn’t know”, he replied out loud to Blurry. He often did that when he was alone in his room. It felt good to let it out instead of arguing with himself inside his own head.

**_Don’t answer back to me you little cunt. Worthless piece of shit. Might as well end yourself here because you’re never going to amount to anything. You won’t get into college when they see you’re psychotic. And when they find out you like it up the ass there gonna rip you to shreds where you stand, homo!_ **

“Shut up. Shut up! SHUT UP!”, he stands from sitting on his bed, screaming and throwing his fists at the sides of his skull, “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”, he bellows so loud, he didn’t even hear somebody racing up the stairs to his loft-room.

His father bursts in and rushes to straight to Tyler, who is now in the middle of room bent with one hand over his head and the other smashing repeatedly against his now-red temple. He was still screaming at his other voice to leave him alone. His father wrapped his arms around the boy making sure to grab at his wrists so that he couldn’t hit himself anymore, and tried to pull him into his protective grasp.

“Hey, Hey! Shhh.” He says, stern but loving, trying to get Tyler to calm down. His father had always been very understanding of Tyler’s mental issues. It ran in the family, so he knew Tyler couldn’t help his episodes, and tried his best to help him learn to cope with it. He knew about this ‘Blurry’ that Tyler had made up. A personification of his troubled mind. He had told his father about what he says to him.

Tyler fought in his fathers caging arms, attempting to hit out and throw himself about. He couldn’t see a thing. Just blackness. Blurry has taken over again. That same heat turned in his chest and rose up just like it always did, giving him the strength to pull his wrists away from his fathers grasp. Tyler looked up with his blood filled eyes at his father before shoving him back, forcing him into the wall, causing him to call out with shock at the painful thud, before he snapped out of it, realising what he’d done.

His father watched in horror, his sons eyes growing dark again. They just stared back at each other in shock. After a few seconds, Tyler’s face scrunched, letting out a heaving sob as he sank to the floor.

His father walked over to him cautiously with hands up to show he wasn’t going to do anything too fast. He crouched and his hands found Tyler’s heaving back. Tyler was now sobbing in his fathers arms on the floor. His body wretched and leaned into his hold. He felt his fathers hand fall softly onto his head and start rubbing at his hair. He spluttered out nonsense words through his slobbering mouth.

“A.. am. Sa.. I’m..”, but he gave in and sobbed again. His face was dripping with pain and sweat. 

It was too much. The dream, blurry threatening him. The constant abuse in his own head and taking over him to the point he had hurt his own Dad. He was tired of tending to this fire.

“I know, shhh”. His father just rocked him slowly and Tyler tried again.

“I-I cou.. I couldn’t see. I t-thought it was..”, he stopped again, the uncontrollable heaving making him mute once more.

“You thought I was him?”, his father stated, nodding. He knew, this had happened more than once before. Tyler just nodded, still crying in his fathers arms.

“I’m. so..sorry. I d-didn’t. mean to” he snivelled into his fathers chest.

“It’s okay son”. After a short while he managed to persuade Tyler to stand and move over to the bed. He had calmed down enough so that he wasn’t hysterically sobbing anymore, although there was wet, teary, snot patches all over his Fathers work polo and there were still tears falling down onto his cheeks now and then. His Father sat with him for a while until the tears stopped.

“I think it’s best you take today off, buddy”, his father suggested after a few mor moments of silence, “I’ll call the school office and explain that you’re not well. You can go back when you’re feeling better.” He stood and headed toward the door. He got a few steps away from Tyler before he heard his sons meek little voice.

“I-I think.. I think I need to go to the doctor again, dad, see if I can up my meds. I’m hearing him again,” he said, looking over his shoulder to his Father. His father just smiled, though it was pained and sad, but nodded to him.

“I’m r-really sorry”, the tears welled in his eyes again before tipping over on to his cheeks.

“I know, buddy, it’s okay”, he said before walking back out of the room.


	7. Chapter 7

Before placing his iPhone on the desk, Josh connected it to his speakers to blare some music while he showered. He had a small en-suite bathroom connected to his bedroom, as well as a significantly-sized closet space.

Josh always prided himself on how he dressed. Mostly in some form of skinny jeans or low-hanging Jogger pants with a vest or muscle fit Tee. Before he did shower, he picked out his outfit. Some jet black drop-crotch joggers, a white vest and black Dr. Marten boots. He placed the clothes on his bed and went for a shower.

Standing in the shower cubicle, he let the water drench his body for a few minutes, his mind slipping to his friend. He had only known Tyler, again, for a few days. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had been around this entire time, like he’d never been gone. He wondered about what his life was like when they were apart, and how he had coped with all the moving around. It pained him to know that Tyler wasn’t the same bubbly, confident kid that he used to be and he felt very protective of him.

Josh finished up in the shower after washing and shampooing his curls, and he shut the water off. He reached for the towel, not really bothering to wipe himself off and wrapped it around his waist. He brushed and flossed and used that god awful mouthwash, the one that makes your tongue feel like it’s on fire, but you know it works! He combed his hair and scrunched the curls a little so it didn’t frizz too badly, and did his usual with some red eyeshadow and black eyeliner. After that he threw on the clothes he chose a little earlier, his shoulders still soaking from the shower, and looked up at the clock on the wall by his bedroom door.

7:28am

He felt a little flutter in his stomach at the thought of seeing Tyler again in about fifteen minutes. He walked back over to the phone on his desk and checked for messages. He had one from Tyler.

Tyjo:- Hey Jishwa, I’m not gonna be in today, I’m sorry 😔 xx

His heart dropped. He felt gutted. He looked up from his phone and out of the window above his desk, across to Tyler’s house, but he couldn’t see anything through Tyler’s loft window. He did however see two people, vaguely through a middle floor window.

It looked like the same two adults he saw getting out of the cars just a few days ago, Tyler’s parents. They were facing each other, in what looked to be heated discussion, hands being thrown out in front of them in the moment. His father pointing up toward Tyler’s room, and back down in front of him as if he was hugging somebody invisible, really tightly. He jostled, like he was fighting with this invisible person and launched his arms forward. Josh panicked for a split second thinking the man was going to push Tyler’s Mother, until he realised that it looked like he was acting something out, describing something. The mans arms dropped to his sides and his head fell with defeat. He was crying. Tyler’s Mother stepped in and embraced the man rubbing at his back. He sobbed there for a moment until he brought his arm up again in a palm-up, ‘I don’t know’ kind of movement.

Josh looked away and back down at his phone to Tyler’s text. He was confused and concerned. Had Tyler and his Dad gotten into an argument? Did it get physical? Why was Tyler not coming into school? Was he hurt? He rushed to type back to his friend.

Jishwa:- What? Bro what’s going on?

Tyjo:- Had a full blown panic attack before. Dad’s making me stay off, it always takes it out of me xx

Jishwa:- Dude 😕 your parents gonna be in with you?

Tyjo:- No. Both working, but it’s alright, I don’t like them seeing me like this, they get too worried and just hover xx

Jishwa:- I’ve just seen your parents talking, your dad looked pretty upset. Is everything okay?

Tyjo:- Not really but it will be okay. He just worries about me xx

Jishwa:- You can’t be on your own all day man 🙁

Tyjo:- I’ll be okay, I’ll see you later xx

Josh looked back up through his window over to where Tyler’s parents were, but they were gone. He didn’t know what to do, he felt helpless. But just then his stomach growled like an angry gremlin up at him. He decided to think it over, over breakfast.

Josh jogged downstairs and heard clanging and other foodie sounds and he followed them to where he found his mother in the kitchen. The smell of bacon invaded his nostrils and filled his entire head. He let out an involuntary grunt of approval.

“Good morning Joshua”, his Mother chirped. She was always in a good mood in the mornings. She was an early riser and always had been.

“I’m on an open-close today sweetie, so I just made you some bacon sandwiches for breakfast. I hope that’s okay!”, she apologetically explained to her son whilst she was placing the last of the dishes in the dishwasher.

“No mom, that’s not okay..” he said, so seriously but it dripped with sarcasm, making his Mother stop what she was doing and look over in confusion before he carried on.

“.. You should have let me cook, you’ll work yourself sick!” He walked over to gab her hand and he smiled that charming smile, so lovingly at his Mother.

He adored this woman in front of him. She had always been the sweetest thing in his life, so nurturing and caring. She always pushed him to do what he loved, and even when that meant converting the basement into a soundproofed music room for his drum kit, she worked double shifts for weeks to make it so. She smiled back at him and moved in to kiss him on the cheek, to which Josh played the oh-so embarrassed teenager and jokingly retorted, which just made her laugh. She gripped her bag and grabbed a cardigan.

“Well I’m going to have to run now sweetie. I won’t be back until late, but I’ve left a twenty in the drawer for you, you can order some pizza for dinner, is that okay?”

“Yes ma’am”, he respectfully answered as he watched her head towards the door, “love you Mom!”, he called after her.

“Love you too, Joshua. But hurry up you’re going to be late!”.

He still cringed and rolled his eyes at his full name but let it slide. He stood there for a second before he turned to the two, fat bacon sandwiches his Mother crafted with love, and started chowing down on them. It took him an entire three and a half minutes to demolish the sandwich mountain, before letting out a huge belch of appreciation.

It was then that it dawned on him that his Mother wouldn’t be here to watch him leave, and would be back way too late to know that his car would be there all day. His head then skipped straight to his friend, who would be sitting all alone in his house all day after just having a panic attack and it just didn’t feel right. It was decided.

“Na. I’m not having that”, he confirmed to himself and jogged out of the kitchen after putting his dish in the dishwasher. He ran upstairs to grab his phone and house keys. He spotted the boots he lay out for himself earlier that morning, and decided to opt for something a little easier to slip on and off, a pair of vans. He picked up his trusty maroon zip-up and a back pack and headed back down the stairs. He made his way back into the kitchen where he raided what his Mother called ‘the Josh cupboard’. It was a small section of the pantry that was dedicated entirely to the snacks that Josh loved. It was always stocked at the start of the week with pop-tarts and Cheetos and a few of those huge gallon sized bottles of Pepsi-cola, along with a few other things. It kept Josh happy, with his Mother being a little bit of a health freak.

He stuffed a few bits into his bag and grabbed a bottle of pop and placed them on the island in the middle of the kitchen. He walked over to ‘the drawer’ to grab the twenty his Mother had left him before checking the time on his phone.

7:56am.

He paused for a second, checking in his head that he had everything he thought he would need to spend a surprise day at Tyler’s to cheer him up. He walked round to the front door and peered out of one of the little windows just beside it, to check if Tyler’s parents were still there. One of the cars wasn’t there but there was still one left in the drive.

Shoot.  _I wonder when they leave for work?_

Just then he saw the Joseph’s front door open and someone stepping out. It was Mrs. Joseph, looking a little upset. He watched as she got into her car and pull out of the drive to head to work. Josh backed away into the kitchen again to retrieve the supplies he had gathered a moment before and headed out to go cheer up his best friend.

 

* * *

 

Tyler put down his phone, feeling fed up with himself. He had let Blurry win again and now his parents were upset. His dad had already headed to work, and he could hear his Mother moving around downstairs. He was going to be alone with his thoughts all day. Great. He knew he was in for a day of torture from Blurry.

“Tyler?!”, his Mom called from downstairs.

He hesitated, before he pulled himself off of his bed and made his way quietly down to the middle floor where his parents room was and stopped at the open bedroom door. He saw his Mother standing with her back to him, facing herself in the mirror. She spotted his reflection and smiled, her eyes still upset and turned to him.

“Which one do you think would look best, honey?”, she asked holding out two different dresses, whilst still in her dressing gown.

Tyler’s eyes shot to the two options, one being a charcoal pin-striped work dress, and the other being a little less formal, navy blue, slightly floaty with small white flowers dotted all over. He pointed to the flowery option.

“I-I’ve always thought you look lovely in that one, Mom”, he practically whispered with a small smile but still sad.

She placed both dresses onto the bed and walked over to Tyler leaning in the doorframe. She pulled him in and leaned the side of his head onto her flat chest. He allowed himself to be consumed by his mothers grasp. They stayed there a moment, silent.

“I’m scared, Mom,” Tyler admitted to her quietly, before starting to cry again.

“I know honey”, she rubbed his back, “and I would be lying to you if I told you that your Father and I weren’t scared for you. You.. you frightened him today Tyler”.

He nodded into her chest, “I’m so sorry”.

“We know. We’re not angry at you. We know you can’t control it, especially when you’re unwell.” She cradled her son for a moment more. Slowly pushing the boy from her chest again, she wiped at his face, clearing the tears.

“I’m going to call the Doctor when I get back from work, okay?”, she said to Tyler, his face now cupped between both of her hands. He nodded to her and she pulled his head in to kiss him on the forehead, heading back in to the bedroom to her dresses.

He headed back upstairs and climbed into bed. He thought to himself it was best to sleep this off, otherwise he would just have to face his own thoughts, and Blurry’s, and he just didn’t feel strong enough to do that today. After about ten minutes he heard his Mother call up to him that she was going to work, and he shouted down his goodbyes. All he could think about was his father and how he had pushed him. What his mother had said to him about frightening him. He was tired of his parents being scared of his moods, he just wanted to be normal. He didn’t want this to keep happening but he couldn’t control it. He couldn’t control Blurry. He wanted Blurry gone. He wanted to kill him. But there was no way of killing him.. unless..

**_.. unless you kill yourself?_ **

Blurry cackled at him, like Tyler had just cracked the funniest joke of the century.

**_Don’t make me laugh, boy. You don’t have the guts. No one would miss you even if you did, you’re nothing to anyone you little.._ **

The doorbell rang from downstairs. Tyler’s head perked up from where it was rested as he was curled up on his side. He hesitated there for a moment but decided to go and investigate. It was better than listening to Blurry nagging at him.

**_This isn’t over boy, you’ll be alone again soon._ **

But he rolled his eyes in annoyance.

His Mother always warned him and his siblings not to open the door if one of them wasn’t home with them, and especially if one of them was ever home alone. As he reached the middle of the last set of stairs the bell rang again, whoever it was they were persistent. Tyler rolled his eyes.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he mumbled to himself.

He wasn’t in the mood for door to doors. As he got to the door he looked through the peeper. All he could see was a familiar but distorted lump of curly brown locks. He knew exactly who it was. He yanked the door open to see a smiling Josh on his front step, a bag and a rather large bottle of Pepsi-cola wrapped in his muscular arms.

“Josh?! Wh-What are y..”, he started before the friendly intruder was inviting himself into Tyler’s house.

He stepped aside to let the boy through, too confused to do much else, and closed the door. Josh walked slowly and quietly around the bottom floor of Tyler’s home, taking it all in. It was a little more open plan than his, the last owner must have redone the inside because one of the walls that was in Josh’s house was nowhere to be seen in Tyler’s. It opened it up completely. It was bright and airy, contemporary feeling, again different to Josh’s which was a little darker and more homely and cosy.

He turned to Tyler, who was still close to the front door, watching him look around his house, still confused as to why the hell the boy was actually here. Josh smiled at him again. That charming, charismatic, beautiful smile. Tyler noticed just then that when Josh smiles, the very tip if his tongue sticks out between a little space between his upper and lower teeth. Tyler decided that it was totally adorable and he ended up blushing.

“You at the very top?”, Josh asked heading over to the stairs in the corner of the open living area.

“Uh, y-yeah”, Tyler confirmed as he followed Josh up to his bedroom.

When they got to the top, Josh made himself at home by slipping his vans off and dumping his bag, drink and himself onto Tyler’s bed. He looked over to the other boy, who was just now coming through his bedroom door, still looking quizzed and frankly a little uncomfortable. He hadn’t had a real friend in years never mind one over to his house, and he hadn’t had Josh over in Ten. Tyler stopped in the middle of his bedroom, not breaking his confused eye contact with Tye hawk-haired boy.

“Don’t get me wrong Josh I’m glad you’re here. But w-why?”, he questioned, “You’re supposed to be in school”. Josh just laughed at this, which made Tyler awkwardly laugh back.

“I skipped to come and cheer you up”, he explained still laughing through his words. He kept the eye contact with the puzzled boy and was grinning quite triumphantly.

Tyler smiled at the grinning boy, scratching his head still feeling a little awkward. He walked over to Josh and propped himself down next to him on his bed. He looked down at the backpack and the big bottle of Pepsi-cola and waved a finger, gesturing to it.

“What’s with all this?”, he says, smiling. Josh leans to it and grabs it. He opens the backpack to reveal its treasures, pulling items out one by one.

“Very cherry pop tarts, chocolate brownie pop tarts, Cheetos and some popcorn”, he lists as he shows Tyler each one, and piles it up in front of Tyler’s pillows, “oh and the drink”, he points to the large bottle.

Tyler sits there for a moment, just looking at Josh. He smiles adoringly at the boy, still not quite over the fact that he’d go to all this trouble for him. He noticed the boy looking past him and over his shoulder, to the corner of the room, curiously. Tyler turns and sees that Josh was looking at his piano.

“You got any instruments at home?”, he points with his thumb over his shoulder. “Just a drum kit and my old trumped I played when I was like eleven”, he giggles to himself.

“Oh my god, you have a drum kit? I knew you played but I didn’t know you had a kit. I’ve never heard it”, Tyler spilled out excitedly.

“Yeah”, Josh laughed again, “my Mom and Dad saved for me to get the basement converted so it was soundproof. She also made a little kitchen area and a toilet room so I could stay down there if I was on a roll”, Josh explained to the excited boy.

“You have to show me!”, Tyler stood and tugged lightly at Josh’s zip-up wanting him to follow.

“What, now?”, he questioned, confused.

“Yeah dude come on, we can come straight back I just want to see”, he pleaded to Josh. Josh stood, with an amused grin on his face.

“Okay, but on one condition..” he started at Tyler. Tyler look back at him expectantly, like he was already willing to do whatever the boy wanted him to in order to get what he wanted. “..you play me a song of yours when we get back”, he said shifting his gaze and one of his fingers over to where the piano stood in the corner.

Tyler’s face dropped. So did his heart. His stomach churned at the thought of exposing his writing to another person. It would be like tearing open his own skin and letting Josh see the evil he felt he had inside him. He couldn’t do it. His head dropped a little, braking eye contact with the other boy, his face sad and disappointed. He walked back over to the bed, Josh’s eyes following him in surprise as he sat himself back down on the bed, cross legged, now looking and playing with his own hands. Josh stood watch for a moment before joining him again, this time just perching on the edge, looking concerned.

“I c-can’t Josh. Not yet”, he explained quietly.

Josh nodded. He didn’t understand why but he decided he didn’t need to, and he was sure he would understand come the time that Tyler could show him.

“It’s okay man, we can do other stuff today,” he resided his friend, “you got any games?”

“Yeah, I got Mario Cart? Wanna play?”

“Yeah! I’m sick at Mario Cart. I’m gonna woop your ass!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one isn’t quite as exciting.   
> Spoiler alert though, Josh will be learning about Blurry soon.. not quite sure in what way yet. We’ll have to see how I’m feeling 😂


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry that this has taken so long to be added to. I promise I’ll do better!  
> Hope you’re ready for some mixed emotions. Enjoy!

“No! N.. nah, awwww!”, Josh chucked his pad onto the bed and he threw his hands over his face, keeling onto his side on Tyler’s bed. It was the 6th time in a row Tyler had beat him on Mario Cart.

“I can’t believe it”, he squeaked, he was still in a ball on the bed laughing to himself.

“What was that about you saying you we’re gonna woop my ass?”, Tyler teased. 

“Oh, shut up Tyler”, he laughed as he brought himself back up from the bed and playfully shoved his friend. 

Tyler collapsed back onto his pillow, letting out a huge belly-laugh. It was louder than Josh had heard him laugh since he was a kid and it made him laugh too. He liked it when Tyler was happy, it reminded him of when they were kids with not a care in the world. 

Tyler turned his head from looking up at the ceiling, over to Josh. His face had turned a little more serious now, sad almost. His gut told him that Josh was worried about him. He didn’t blame him. One minute he’s watching Tyler laughing, next minute he’s being told he’s having panic attacks. It’s a lot to deal with as a friend, and he’d feel the same if it was Josh.  
And Tyler was right, Josh was worried. 

“What happened to you Tyler?”.

Boom. There it was. No messing, no pussyfooting around it. But Tyler kind of appreciated that.

He just looked up to the ceiling again, not knowing what to say. He brings both hands to his chest and starts picking at his fingers. 

“I know moving around a lot affected you. I just wanna understand what’s going on in your head a little. You’re different dude.”

“People change, Josh”, he threw at his friend, still not looking at him. He brought one of his hands up to pinch his eyes, desperately trying to prevent the tears from flowing. 

“Not like this Ty”, Josh continued, “you don’t go from the most outgoing, popular kid in the street, being the leader of our little crew and making all the decisions, to jumping at every sound you hear, having panic attacks and sending someone flying in the school parking lot for pushing your friend..”

“I-I was defending you,” Tyler sat up, quickly getting defensive over what he felt was accusations coming from his friend.

Josh, startled, paused for a moment, observing Tyler’s reaction. He didn’t want to push him too far but he wanted some answers.

“No Tyler,” he started again in a slow, calm voice, “that wasn’t defence. You should have seen yourself, you were like an animal. That was kill-or-be-killed mode. It’s like something took over you. Your eyes, the way you moved. You weren’t you.”

“My eyes?”, the boy questioned Josh, confused.

“Yeah man. You’re gonna think I’m crazy”, he said laughing a little, “I swear your eyes started turning red. I don’t know what you would have done to Brendon if I wouldn’t have stopped you. You looked like you wanted to murder him.”

Tyler looked down to his hands, not wanting to believe what he was hearing.

“My eyes turned red?”, he questioned, but more to himself than Josh. “Blurry’s eyes are red”.

“Blurry?”

“You don’t want to know, Josh. He warned me to stay away from you and I think he was right”, again he was more talking to himself than Josh. 

He was now shifting himself off the bed away from Josh, like he had suddenly become a danger to the boy, and walked over to the other side of the room avoiding his gaze. He was starting to panic now feeling like he had already said too much. He crossed his arms and grabbed up at his hair with one of his hands, pulling a little and closing his eyes, trying not to freak out too much in front of the other boy. He flinched when he felt a hands settle on his shoulders, guiding him to turn around again. He didn’t even hear Josh get up. 

Josh looked at him with those silky mocha eyes. He was calm, with an empathetic look on his face, letting Tyler know that he was safe with him.

“You do t have to tell me, but it would certainly help me to understand you better Ty”, he reassured the boy.

For a few seconds Tyler could only focus on one thing. Josh’s lips. They were right there, not two feet in front of him. He wanted to take the chance and lean in, but he was too scared. He looked up into his eyes and noticed Josh’s eyes were looking down slightly, like he was looking at his lips too, before his eyes flashed back up to meet his own. They stayed there for a moment gazing at each other, until Tyler made his decision and sighed, breaking the silence.

“You might want to sit down, it’s gonna take a while to explain”, he gestured to the bed. 

After Josh had gotten himself comfortable again, Tyler followed him over, stopping in the middle of the room. He wrapped his arms around his own torso, took a deep breath and started.

“When he attacks I just freak. I hear him in my head every day. Mostly when I doubt myself, but sometimes he comes out of nowhere”, he explained to the boy on the bed. 

“And I’m not talking about that little inner-voice in the back of your head that everyone has; I mean I can literally hear him as if he were in the room with me,” he paused, gauging Josh’s reaction, which was surprisingly calm. He decided it was okay to carry on.

“It started about three years ago. I was in one particular school where the bullying was just relentless; and the worst part is that they never left any marks, or bruises, so I couldn’t really prove it. It’s why I hate bullies so much, and probably why I flipped so badly when.. that guy..”, he clicked his fingers trying to spark the memory of his name.

“Brendon?”, Josh interjected.

“Yeah, when Brendon pushed you”, he took a long pause, looking into mid air, figuring out what to say next. 

“This one particular day, things escalated out of nowhere. They caught me in the boys locker room and cornered me in the showers. Three boys against one. They all dove on me at once and started beating the shit out of me. I don’t remember a lot because everything went really hazy at first, and then... just blackness.”

He looked at Josh again, who was still calm and collected about the whole situation, before walking back over to the bed to perch on the end with him.

“What happened then?”, Josh urged after a moment. Tyler shrugged.

“I don’t remember”, he started again, “It’s why I call him Blurry, because my vision goes blurry first before I black out. But when the coach found me, I was still naked from showering, balled up facing the wall, screaming for Blurry to shut up. I had a face of contusions and my hands were bloodied, presumably from where I’d been smacking the wall. It’s almost like, when I blacked out, Blurry took over as a defence, but then he never went away again afterward. I don’t know what happened during the blackout and I wondered why I wasn’t more cut up and bruised until they let me back into school a few weeks later. I ran into two of the boys that cornered me and they stopped dead in their tracks and scarpered; that confused me, until I saw the other boy the next day and he had a splint and a butt-load of tape around his face. He still had the remanence of two black eyes and one of his eyes was still bloodshot”, he took a pause, again thinking of what else to say, “wherever I went in school people stared at me, got out of my way in the corridors. They stayed as far way as possible from me in the locker room. I got labelled the freak.”

“What did you do to him?”, Josh urged after a couple of seconds, with a subtle lacing of concern in his voice. Tyler looked away with tears in his eyes, one tear brimmed and rolled down his cheek.

“A-apparently I attacked him. When I asked the headteacher what had happened he told me that both of the other boys witnessed me grabbing the back of his head and smacking his face against the wall so hard that I collapsed his nose; he had to get it reconstructed”.

Josh’s mouth fell open. He honestly didn’t know whether to be impressed or appalled.  
Tyler saw this reaction and his face scrunched, letting out a sob. Josh could see that he was remorseful of his actions and shuffled himself forward pulling Tyler in for an embrace. At the end of the day he was just protecting himself, and it has been known for people to experience blackouts when they snap.  
He let Tyler cry it out, feeling the wetness soak through his top and onto his torso. It took a while for him to calm down enough for him to sit back up and speak again.

“He’s violent Josh, and it terrifies me because he is me, and I am him. I’d never forgive myself if I badly hurt anyone important to me. When I freaked out this morning, my dad was trying to stop me from hitting myself and I shoved him against the wall. When everything goes black I get convinced that he’s there, that Blurry’s gonna hurt me. I hurt my own dad because I thought it was Blurry!”, he was crying again as he said this, “I’m scared that one day everything will go black and I won’t come back again, and Blurry will come out for good. I feel like I’m possessed!”

Tyler looked at Josh, who looked like he was thinking really hard about something. It made him feel strange, like Josh was aware of something he wasn’t. He dropped it. He was too exhausted to push. He felt Josh’s hands on the tops of his arms.

“I’m gonna help you through this Tyler. I don’t know how, but I’m gonna do my best. I’m not gonna let this ‘Blurry’ guy take over my best fren”.

Best fren. Tyler liked that, it was cute, like Jishwa and TyJo. It made him want to tell Josh more.

“Since I’ve been on meds, I have found it a lot easier to ignore him and cope with what he’s saying. But recently I have been struggling because I knew we were moving again, which set off my anxiety about a new school and starting all over again. Again!...He’s been calling me all sorts of names, making me feel like shit, even telling me to kill myself because I’m worthless and a burden on everyone. That no one will accept me for being a quote-on-quote ‘psycho’. That my family won’t love me when they find out I like boys, and th..”

“Wait you’re gay!?”, Josh interrupted him, shocked that this theory had been confirmed. This threw Tyler into an almost-angry state. His body tensed as he puffed himself up a little in defence.

“What are you a homophobe too?” He practically spat back at Josh. Josh quickly held his hands up.

“N-no, no, I have two other gay friends, I-I don’t care I just didn’t take you for being gay”, he explained in haste. Tyler relaxed at the statement, his shoulders sinking down again.

“Sorry”, he mumbled, “I just get really defensive”. 

Josh smiled back at him in reassurance. He was surprised at himself that he almost felt relief over this confirmation. His thoughts were cut off by Tyler.

“I don’t know if I’m gay. I know I like boys, but I’m not sure if I like girls too. I might. I just haven’t figured that part out yet. I guess for now I’ll say I’m gay”, he explained to Josh, who nodded at the statement.

Josh found himself starting at the boy admiring the fact that he told him so nonchalantly, and Tyler was staring back. He was suddenly very aware of how closely they were sitting together, and that his hand had slid down, from earlier, to Tyler’s forearm close to his wrist. He looked down at his hand and had an overwhelming urge to hold Tyler’s hand. He couldn’t stop himself. He slowly unwrapped his fingers from round Tyler’s arm and softly traced his hand to find Tyler’s fingers. Josh linked his fingers with the other boy’s. He didn’t know whether this was a romantic urge or a protective one, he just knew it felt right to do it. Tyler looked down at his hand in disbelief, unsure of what to make of Josh’s sudden gesture. He looked back up at Josh who was staring with those beautiful brown eyes, and he softened. He felt safe and loved. Their faces were just a foot apart and they were scanning each other’s expressions, both gauging the situation with every passing second. It wasn’t enough. Josh leaned in a little, hesitating, before bringing his forehead to Tyler’s, closing his eyes. Something sparked in Josh. His heart ignited and his whole body felt like it was buzzing. The sparks flew through is veins, bouncing round his body, filling him with electricity. They stayed there for a little while, just enjoying the comforting contact, before Josh pulled himself away again. His head swam as he opened his eyes to see Tyler’s chestnut eyes full of confusion in front of him.

“What was that?”, Tyler half-whispered calmly after a brief silence. Josh smiled a little.

“I-I don’t know”, he answered, which was the truth. He had shocked himself.

Tyler let out a laugh, which set Josh off too. He felt like he had what he would imagine to be a school-girl crush kind of feeling. His head was still pounding and his skin felt like it was still buzzing.  
They both looked down at their interlaced fingers, still amused. Josh sighed and shifted a little before clearing his throat to speak.

“Shall we maybe go and do something? Go for a walk or a coffee?”

Tyler contemplates these options before deciding that he didn’t really feel like walking anywhere. 

“Hmmm. Coffee”, he stated. 

“I’ll drive”, Josh smiled. He slid himself off the bed, his hand still attached to Tyler’s and pulled him gently off the bed before letting go. 

Tyler felt like his hand now felt empty and cold. He squeezed his hand into itself feeling the clammy texture left over from Josh’s contact. He took himself over to his closet and pulled out some black jeans, a black tee and a long floral kimono style cardigan. He walked back over to his bed and dumped them down before pulling off the sweat pants and scruffy tee he had on previously, stripping himself down to his boxer shorts and socks.

Josh, who had been bent down fixing the laces on his vans, stood up to find a semi-naked Tyler in front of him. He let out an awkward, involuntary ‘oh’, before turning instinctively to give Tyler some privacy.

“It’s okay”, Tyler said amused, noticing how pink and flustered Josh had become, “I’m used to getting changed in front of other people in locker rooms aren’t I?”

Josh nodded his head realising the truth of this and felt a bit silly. He laughed to himself and found himself looking at Tyler’s body. Slender but very toned, olive skin but paler than his face and arms. Tyler had just pulled his black jeans up when Josh noticed the scars all over his upper thighs and stomach. Some were silvery and some were still purple and quite raised but it looked like he had at least fifty, if not more. It made Josh’s stomach drop and his heart felt hollow with sadness. Tyler spotted the expression on Josh’s face and automatically knew. He looked to his stomach and traced his belly with this fingertips.

“I’ve been clean for 5 months. It’s the longest I’ve gone since this all started,” he stated, looking up timidly at Josh. Josh smiled and walked over to the boy. He took the hand that was still on his scars and held it.

“I’m going to help you through this Tyler, I promise”, he said before dropping the boys hand again. He reached for the black tee on Tyler’s bed, scrunched it up so the head hole was visible and popped it over Tyler’s head. 

Tyler was amused by this and he playfully shoved Josh, making him laugh as he went out of Tyler’s bedroom, before pulling the rest of the t-shirt over his body. He popped on his kimono, grabbed his keys and phone, slid on a pair of black vans and followed his friend out of the door.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jenna Black is exposed and she’s a bitch.   
> Please don’t hate me :D

“So where did you disappear off to yesterday?”, Josh’s friend, Andy asked the boy curiously.

Josh didn’t even respond, he was in his own little blissful world thinking about Tyler. The day that they had yesterday, the ups and the downs of it. One minute they were playing Mario Cart, the next he’s being told how all his mental issues started and the specific incident that caused him to have his first mental break. And the moment that they both had. That electrifying, mind blowing, body-buzzing feeling that Josh had never felt before. It confused him.

“Earth to Josh?”, Andy joked, waving his hand in front of the boy’s face.

Josh chuckled to himself a little before snapping out of it and coming out of his daydream to focus on his friends Andy and Pete in front of him.

“I’m here”, he laughed.

“Could have fooled us”, interrupted the other boy, Pete, “you looked like you were in your own world”.

“Well? Where were you yesterday? I was bored in science because you so selfishly left me all on my own,” Andy jokingly complained to Josh, to which Pete cleared his throat suggestively toward Andy at the statement. “You don’t count, you were all away across the science lab”, he said to Pete.

Josh contemplated for a moment what he should say to the boys. Give them a version of the truth, or make something up? But he felt he couldn’t lie completely to his other two best friends.

“I was with Tyler”, he began.

“Oooooooohhh!”, they both cooed at Josh, to which he looked at them sternly and rolled his eyes.

“I was cheering him up”, he began again, “he gets these really bad panic attacks and he felt like he couldn’t come in. His Mom and Dad work all day and it didn’t sit right with me that he was on his own, so I went round for a bit, and took him for coffee”.

Andy and Pete, still slightly amused, dropped the teasing and nodded their heads at Josh. They seemed to just accept that explanation.

“Well, we haven’t met this ‘Tyler’ properly, you should get him to sit with us at lunch. I would have thought you’d have introduced us by now”, Andy light-heartedly accused.

“Yeah, I will today. I just didn’t want to overload him, you know? Listen though, he’s a bit sensitive so don’t torture him too much, okay guys?”

Andy drew a cross over his heart with his forefinger sarcastically at Josh to which the boy just laughed at, along with Pete. Josh looked up at the clock to see it was one minute to nine, the bell would be ringing in less than sixty seconds.

“I’ve gotta go meet Tyler”, he said to the other two boys as he grabbed his backpack and jacket and headed down his isle, past all the other students towards the door.

“The bell hasn’t rang yet Mr. Dun”, his count teacher called after him, to which Josh spun in his head to face him.

“I have to go and meet Tyler again to guide him to his lessons, sir”, he replied impatiently as he fumbled for his blue pass.

“My apologies”, he said as he was scanning the pass in Josh’s hand, “though next time, please present the pass before you start leaving”.

“Yes, sir”, he nodded and turned and headed out of the door.

Tyler’s count room was only 2 doors down, however the space between the doors was quite long and he had only just gotten close to Tyler’s door when the bell rang. He waited there, outside Tyler’s room until he saw the tall, slender boy’s face and fluffy, dark mousey hair emerge. He was still in the crowd of other teenagers in his count room but his head was half a foot above everyone else’s, so Josh could see him. He was talking to someone, a girl, blonde, fairly tall herself and slender.

It was Jenna Black.

Josh’s stomach dropped; he had a feeling this would happen and it was not good.

Josh, and his group of friends of all people knew what Jenna could be like. The not-so sweet and innocent cheer captain was lovely if you were on her good side, but as soon as you did something she didn’t like or didn’t do something that she wanted you to, she could make your life a living hell if she wanted it to be so; and Josh had a front row seats to Jenna making his friend Andy’s life miserable for the past year. He decided to drop it for now, but he was going to warn him about her when the time was right.

He saw Tyler’s head pop up from talking to Jenna and he they made eye contact. Tyler beamed at Josh as he was coming out of the classroom door and pushed through the oncoming traffic to get to him. It made Josh’s heart flutter and he could feel himself grinning involuntarily back at the boy. Tyler practically skipped over to Josh and gave him a huge bro-hug before doing their usual handshake. Jenna, who had made her way over to the boys too, caught sight of the two and shook her head to herself.

“So yeah, I’ll see you at practice tonight?”, she started, gently pulling Tyler away from Josh, giving the other boy a mildly disapproving look up and down before turning to Tyler’ “me and the cheer girls have done a little routine for you. It’s tradition when a new member joins the team”, she explained, waving one of her hands down in a kind of blasé motion.

Tyler noticed the way she looked at Josh and turned to the boy, quizzical of the tension between them, but Josh was looking at the floor now looking a little annoyed. He looked back at Jenna.

“Uh, y-yeah, I’ll be there. It starts at four right?”

“Uhuh, four ‘til six. It should give you enough time to change and get a snack before it starts. You’ll need to talk to coach in the Gym first.” She darted another glance at Josh before she said her goodbyes to Tyler and headed to her own classes. Tyler turned to Josh.

“Dude, What was that about?”, he said to Josh, who looked back up from staring at the floor. Josh just shrugged. “It’s kind of complicated, I’ll tell you at lunch yeah?”

Tyler, confused, nodded at Josh and gestured for them to get going. Their morning was pretty uneventful. They had history and math together, but science was a bit boring because Josh was in a higher set. He did however get placed next to Hailey, Jenna’s friend, for science. He got talking with her a little and she seemed really nice, just a little awkward like himslef, which was refreshing to know that he wasn’t the only timid one.

When the bell rang for lunch, Tyler felt he could breathe again. He felt a little bit lost without his friend in a school full of people he didn’t know. He headed out of the science lab to find that Josh wasn’t there yet. A few moments went by and he was starting to panic until a familiar voice came behind him from the classroom.

“Do you want me to wait with you until he gets here?”, Hailey asked him in her small, soft voice.

“Huh?”

“Josh...? I know he meets you after classes. Did you want me to wait with you until he’s here?”, she repeated.

Tyler looked back up from the girl to scan the corridor for Josh again, but he still want here. He looked back to Hailey and nodded.

“Please”, he said, gratefully.

A good five or six minutes had passed and Tyler was in a close-to full blown panic mode. Hailey attempted to chit-chat but Tyler didn’t really respond. He tapped his fingers on his other hand and all sorts of things were going through his mind. Had Josh gotten a detention? Was he hurt? Or maybe..

**_He’s left you boy. He’s gone without you. He’s left you standing waiting for him like the needy little shit you are._ **

Tyler reached up to his head like he usually does and pulled at his hair and closed his eyes, trying to fight back the panic-stricken tears that will threaten to spill any moment now.

“A-are you okay Tyler?”, Hailey asks, noticing the distress the boy is so obviously attempting to hide. But he doesn’t hear her. He just hears _him_.

**_You fucking idiot. Believing that that boy was going to help you. He just wants to get into your head Tyler. He’s gonna take all he can from you, boy. He’s going to lie to you and try and keep you all to himself so he can use you._ **

“I n-need to go to the bathroom”, he so abruptly announced to Hailey, before immediately taking himself off to the nearest men’s room, which was just a few doors down from where they were standing, leaving her stunned.

He threw himself through the door and found the nearest cubicle. He closed the door and smacked at his skull trying to get Blurry to calm down.

“Get out of my head, you beast”, he hissed through his teeth and smacked at his head again.

Outside, Hailey, who was still standing in the now-empty corridor, heard footsteps running from down the hall. Her eyes could see a curly hawk-haired boy bolting towards where she was standing. He panted as he came to a standstill close to the girl. He wheezed and spluttered.

“Ha.. have you.. seen T-Tyler?”, still gasping.

“He went in there”, she pointed towards the men’s room, a few metres down the hall. Josh looked round to the door and back at Hailey before thanking her and jogging into the bathroom.

Josh looked around the large white and blue tiled room frantically. There was a huge urinal bath with metal sheets separating each peeing spot for a little privacy and three light blue toilet stalls. Only one of the cubicle doors was closed. He stepped toward it slowly and quietly to be sure not to startle the boy.

“Ty? You in here buddy?”, he called out into the silent air. He got nothing back. The silence was violent. “Tyler, come on now. I need to know you’re okay dude”, he repeated, getting worried.

After a brief moment of silence. A loud sob erupted from the closed stall which let Josh know that he was indeed in there. The question was, in what state? He came to the door of the cubicle and pushed on it gently to check if it would open, but it was locked.

“Tyler I’m gonna need you to open the door buddy, okay?”

Sobs...

A few seconds passed and he heard thudding coming, presumably, from the solid brick wall in Tyler’s cubicle, replacing the sobs. Josh decided not to repeat himself again, concerned he may be wasting precious time. He looked to the cubicle next to Tyler’s, quietly pushed it open and made his way inside. He lay down the white, porcelain lid of the toilet seat and stepped up. Giving a little peak over the wall into Tyler’s stall, he made sure Tyler wasn’t indecent, but noticed he was banging his head against the wall. He acted fast, silently thanking the fact that Tyler’s toilet seat was down too, hauling himself over the cubicle wall and stepping down onto the other toilet. He got down and immediately put his hand on the spot where Tyler was hitting his head on the wall, preventing him from hitting his head further.

Thud. Thud. Thud... Silence.

Once Tyler realised he wasn’t actually hurting himself anymore he gave up and rested his head against the palm of Josh’s hand up against the wall. He stayed there for a good minute in silence before Josh decided to speak.

“It’s okay Tyler, I’m here”, he whispered to the boy.

Tyler tiled his head to the side slightly toward Josh, grinning. His forehead was still connected with his palm, and his eyes flew open. They weren’t the same rich, dark chocolaty brown eyes he knew. They were blood red and vicious. The hairs on the back of his neck pricked, his blood ran cold and his eyes grew wide in horror. He couldn’t move. Tyler shifted, removed his forehead from Josh’s wall-hand and brought his body to face the other boy with the wide, creepy smile still on his face.

“ ** _I told Tyler.. to stay away from you, for a reason, dammit_** ”, he growled to Josh with a slow deep voice. He grinned that menacing grin at the boy again. He twitched and jaunted, laughing to himself. He stepped to Josh, getting uncomfortably close to his face, scanning every hair and pore.

“ ** _Hmmm_** ”, he hummed to himself, “ ** _you really are pretty...Tyler thinks so too_** ”.

With a sneering chuckle he started to raise his hand up to touch Josh’s face. Josh took a startled breath; his hand was black.

“Tyler!?”, he quietly exclaimed, shocked, almost a whisper.

Tyler stopped in his tracks. His sneer dropped and the blood drained, revealing a pair of brown, panicked eyes. He took a step back away from Josh as he looking at the hand that was threatening Josh’s personal space. He looked back at Josh whom looked completely job-smacked and they stared at each other in confusion. After a little while of Josh trying to figure out what the hell just happened, he spoke.

“What the hell was th..”

“What did he say to you?”, Tyler interrupted, obviously still scared.

“He?..No. I’m the one that should be asking questions here, Tyler. What the fuck was that?! And who is ‘he’?”, Josh was almost annoyed now.

“I told you. Blurry”.

“THAT was Blurry? I just spoke to Blurry?”

“Tell me what he said to you!”, he raised his voice a little, becoming desperate. Josh looked at him and took a breath.

“He said ‘I told Tyler to stay away from you for a reason’, he recited for Tyler, “and then um.. he called me ‘pretty’. Like.. he thinks I’m pretty”.

Tyler recoiled and brought his arms up to cross his hands on top of his head, looking away from Josh in disbelief.

“H-he also said that you think so too”, he explains with a teasing half smile.

Tyler, who let out a little gasp at this information, darts his perfectly normal, silky brown eyes back at Josh in alarm to see that Josh actually looks like he’s enjoying that fact.

“I don’t know what he’s saying sometimes, it sounds muffled, like I’m under water. I think he does it on purpose so I can’t hear. And everything is dark, so I cant even see.”

He brings his arms back down letting his eyes follow them down to the floor. He cups his face in his hands, cheeks burning, flushed with embarrassment.

After a moment he feels a couple of fingers under his chin lift with just enough force to bring his head back up to meet Josh’s. Josh, still flashing that beautiful, cheeky smile, looks straight into Tyler’s. The other boy melts in Josh’s gaze and his heart explodes. It was just then he realised just how close he’d been to Josh this whole time.

“I don’t give a shit what Blurry says, Ty. I’m not going anywhere”, he said softly. “But you need to get some help”.

Tyler nodded. And with that he tips his head slightly one way, and leans in. Tyler, pulling his head back in shock just an inch or so, meets the cubicle door to lean on as Josh slips his hand up onto the side of his face, touching his lips to Tyler’s. Their lips dance, and their tongues tease each other, just enough to give them both butterflies. Tyler didn’t even notice himself wrapping his left arm around Josh’s waist until he felt himself pulling him closer into his body. They kissed there for another moment before Josh pulled himself away, stealing one last peck as he did so.

Tyler breathed deep, catching his breath and they remained in their embrace. Josh smiled happily at him, before his face turned a little more serious.

“I don’t really know what’s going on with me Tyler. I thought I was straight but you just make me feel..”, he paused, not even knowing the word, “I know I like you, I just don’t know if I can tell people yet. I need to figure this out, you know?”, he explained, semi-apologetic.

Tyler nodded in understanding and smiled back at him.

“It’s okay Josh, I get it. I’ve never really been ‘out’ to people but I’ve found the worst thing is hiding it from yourself. Don’t lock it away completely Josh, it will eat you alive.”

Josh smiled and nodded to Tyler before they both slowly inched themselves out of their embrace. Tyler bent to pick up both of their things and Josh looked at his phone for the time.

“Hey we’ve only lost fifteen minutes of lunch, let’s go meet the boys”.

“The boys?”, Tyler questioned as he handed Josh his backpack and jacket.

“Andy and Pete, they want to meet you”.

“Why? Do they want to do the whole ‘if we don’t like your new boyfriend you’re not allowed to go out with him’ thing?”, he teased in a rather high-pitched, girly voice as he said this.

Josh looked up at him in shock at the word ‘boyfriend’, and Tyler saw his reaction.

“Jesus Josh, I’m kidding”, he laughed.

They left the bathroom to find that Hailey was still waiting outside, leaning herself in the opposite wall, staring at her phone. They both stopped, surprised to see her still there.

“Oh”, she exclaimed and picked herself off the wall when she spotted them. “I hope you don’t mind, I was worried about Tyler”, she pointed, and turned her attention directly to the boy. “You took yourself off really quickly, I just wanted to know you were okay. You we’re both in there a while.”

Both boys smiled to her but Tyler’s words go stuck in his throat. His mind slipped to what had happened between him and Josh in the cubicle, and what Blurry had said to him, until he was pulled back again by Josh’s voice.

“..had a bit of a panic attack. He gets a bit freaked out sometimes. I just had to calm him down”, he said and Tyler nodded silently, agreeing with the boy. He thought he better say something.

“Thankyou though, Hailey. D-do you want to walk to the food hall with us?”

“Sure!”, she said in her soft voice.

 

*   *   *

The three of them made their way into the cafeteria chatting between themselves, unaware of the attention they were drawing. People were probably wondering what a jock, (Tyler) and a preppy girl, (Hailey) were doing hanging round with a punk, because god forbid they were friends!

Part way into the food hall they stopped and Hailey turned to say her goodbyes, waving a little before she took herself off to the cheer table. Tyler spotted Jenna in the distance looking rather concerned and looking over toward himself and Josh, questioning Hailey before he was distracted by Josh pulling at his forearm, leading him away.

They came to a small, circular table with a few other people sitting, eating their lunch. Josh let go of Tyler’s arm, snuck up behind them all and purposefully slammed his bag and jacket down in ‘his’ seat, making everyone at the table jump out of their skin. One of the boys turned and started play-brawling with Josh for scaring them. It made Tyler laugh.

“Everyone, this is Tyler”, Josh announced after him and the other boy had stopped messing around. Everyone looked up to nod and say hi and throw him offers to sit. Tyler made his way around the table to a seat right next to Josh and quietly put his backpack on the floor and pulled out his seat to sit down. Josh turned to him and started introducing people to him, who all said hi again as he said their names.

“This is Mark, Patrick, Andy and Pete”.

Tyler said hi timidly at the end of all of the names, knowing he would more than likely forget them. Immediately, Andy had something to say.

“My god he’s cute isn’t he?! He’s like a little mouse!”, he said laughing, to which Josh glared at him a little. “Alright, alright”, Andy backed off with his hands up.

“I’m hardly a mouse, I’m 6ft3”, Tyler threw back at Andy light-heartedly, still quiet but nonetheless.

The boys laughed and Josh looked round at him, proud that the boy was standing up for himself and patted him on the back quite hard, once, and laughed himself.

“Ah, he has a little fire in him I see. That’s good, you’re gonna need it here”.

Tyler’s face dropped a little, not quite understanding what Andy meant by that.

“Oh shut up Andy, let him settle in a little before you scare the shit out of him, he’s just sat down”, Josh demanded. Andy smirked, challenging Josh.

“Where have you lover boys been anyway? Off for a smooch?”, Andy teased further, punching his friend Pete in the arm while they both cackled. Josh went cold. He was stumped.

“No actually”, Tyler retorted, a little annoyed, “I get panic attacks. One of my biggest fears is meeting new people and Josh was helping me to get my shit together before coming and meeting you guys. You see, I had a feeling I’d get this kind of interrogation and I was preparing myself for it. Is that okay with you, Andy?”, he put a fair bit of pressure on the boy’s name as he said it.

This throwback made the other three boys look at Andy in the way Tyler wanted it to; like an asshole.

Josh, slowly shaking his head a little looked at Tyler, dazzled. Andy took this and knew Tyler wasn’t going to let him pick on him. He laughed a little to himself and dove into conversation with the other boys. Tyler looked to Josh who was still looking at him in amazement.

“I have my moments”, he quietly joked to Josh, which made him laugh, and they both joined in with the other boys.

After a little while, and many incidences of noticing Jenna looking over at him, Tyler remembered that Josh needed to explain what went on between him and Jenna that morning. He plucked up the courage and asked him.

“So, What was that between you and Jenner this morning?” The table went quiet, like a little bubble of silence in the loud, bustling food hall. Tyler looked between each of the boys faces at the circular table, scanning each of them for an answer. Nothing, until he heard Andy speak.

“Yeah Josh, do tell us what happened between you and the glorious Jenna Black this morning. We’re just dying to know.” The words dripped sarcasm and even had a slightly malicious tone. It just confused Tyler even more. Josh looked at Tyler, wishing now that he hadn’t so openly brought it to their attention, but he had promised to explain. He sighed.

“Last year, Andy was new. He’d moved with his Dad here from New York, where it’s a little easier to be a bit more open about stuff like sexuality. People here are a bit backward, Tyler. If the kids here find out someone is gay..” he put a lot of emphasis on that part, “..they’ll rip them to shreds. They’ve only just really calmed down on Andy, I think that’s why he’s a little spiney sometimes. His offence is a defence”, he explained.

“Hey! I’m not spiney!” Andy retorted.

“You do come across as an asshole sometimes, dude”.

Tyler contemplated what Josh was saying, knowing that the way Josh was saying it was secretly aimed toward Tyler as a warning, and probably an explanation as to why Josh wasn’t ready to be ‘out’ yet. But he was still confused.

“But what does this have to do with Jenna?”

“Jenna was the fucking bitch-face that started it all”, Andy interjected, with venom, “I was in her count room last year and she started talking to me and we got onto the subject of boys. Me, being stupid and completely unaware of what a backstabbing hoe she was, told her that I was gay. The bitch gossiped and giggled with me all the way through count but by the time lunch time came, BAM, it started, and only got worse.”

“So she told everyone, knowing you’d get tortured?”, he cleared, to which everyone at the table, including Josh, nodded in response.

“For months I was pushed over in the corridors, my head flushed down the toilet and publicly humiliated, because she opened her trap”.

Tyler couldn’t believe it, she was so nice to him. He thought about what a close call it was, that this could have been him. If he would have told Jenna about him being gay, that could have been him. He looked up over to Jenna, who happened to be looking in his direction. She waved and smiled at him, to which he just half smiled back. He looked back over to his boys, remembering something.

“But maybe it was someone else? Someone overhearing you two speaking? Why would she do that when she has that gay friend ‘Way’, or whatever he’s called?”

“Gerrard Way? He’s bi, and it’s a bit different, Jenna and Gerrard are cousins, she kind of has to put up with it”, Josh explained, “But she’s a bit of a bible-basher, so that’s probably why she drags other gays”.

“He’s got a thing for you Josh”, Tyler teased, to which Andy and Pete got overly excited about.

“How do you know?!”, Pete demanded.

“I’m in their count room, they both sit behind me. I’m not sure Gerrard is keen on me but when you we’re mentioned..”, he nodded toward Josh, “..let’s just say he expressed very openly what he’d do to you if he had the chance”, he explained, smirking to himself.

Josh looked a little disgusted and shocked, looking up and over to where Gerrard was sitting with Jenna and Hailey, along with the rest of the jocks and cheer squad. Andy and Pete were still overly excited at the prospect of Gerrard Way crushing on Josh. It made Tyler’s stomach knot. He wanted to be able to tell Gerrard to back-off and that Josh was his. But he couldn’t.

**_He’s never going to be yours, I’ll make sure of it._ **

Tyler leant forward, both arms on the food hall dining table and pulled at a fistful of his hair. There was far too much going on. The boys were all chatting between themselves, students were walking past and talking loudly as they went. One student dropped their Food plate and tray drawing Tyler’s gaze for a moment. He looked back up and saw that both Jenna Black and Gerrard were looking at him from across the room like they were assessing his every move. Everything went quiet except for a ringing in his ears. Things were much too slow, like they weren’t real and out of nowhere all of the students in the food hall simultaneously stood and picked up their belongings. He was brought back round when he realised Josh was shaking his shoulders.

“..the bell rang two minutes ago dude, let’s go”.

Still dazed, he rose and followed Josh out of the cafeteria, belongings in hand. He was thinking about what they had all said about Jenna and about the fact that he was going to find it very hard to avoid her. After all he was part of the basketball team and she was cheer captain.

“What’s up dude, you’ve gone real quiet, more than usual”, Josh expressed his concern. Tyler paused for a moment.

“I don’t know what to do about Jenna. I have gym with her and she’s cheer captain. I can’t ignore her or she’ll know somethings wrong”, he said as they were walking towards their next class.

“Listen, Tyler. We’re not telling you to avoid her, or even not be friends with her. We just wanted to make it very clear to you what she’s really like. Lots of new people fall for Jenna’s trap. If you choose to be friends with her then whatever but if you want your reputation to go unscathed, you have to be careful around her.”

Tyler nodded, he felt better for talking it out with Josh.

The rest of the school day was the usual routine, two classes with Josh; they had English and then music class. In music Tyler got called up to the front by their teacher Mr. Marshall, a rather fitting name for a music teacher, and was asked to explain chord sequences on the piano. Being really quite good at piano, he explained with ease once he got past the terror in his gut. Josh watched in awe as Tyler broke out into an unfamiliar yet awesome melody which was ‘in Cmajor’, and he wondered if it was one of Tylers renditions. He was the first to start the round of applause when Tyler finished playing.

“You’re quite the pianist Mr. Joseph”, Mr. Marshall complimented after the applause had stopped, “I’m wondering if you would be interested in joining the schools band for performances? Our last pianist had to leave a few months back, and I’ve not found a player since”.

“U-um, I er, I play basketball for the school too, sir, so I’m not sure if it would clash,” he started, and the teacher nodded with slight disappointment.

“Well practice is only on a Wednesday and a Friday“, Josh suggested. He was the drummer for the school band.

“Basketball is on a Monday and Thursday”, he said nodding, more to himself than Josh or Mr. Marshall, “Yeah, there may be games that clash with practices but I’ll give it a go!”

“Great!”. Mr. Marshall seemed very pleased.

The boys left their music room at the end of the school day, elated. Tyler was happy that he might get a chance to play more music and get even better at piano.

“I can come to practice with you if you like? My Mom is working late again so I have nothing better to do. I can take you home then too”, he offered with a big cheesy smile, one of Tyler’s favourite ones where his tongue sticks out a little. Tyler went sheepish.

“Y-you’d do that for me?”. He blushed.

“Yeah, dude. Besides I wanna watch you play.”

They chatted as they made their way down the two flights of stairs to where the locker rooms were. Tyler reminded Josh that he had to meet with the coach in the gymnasium before he got changed so he followed him through the double doors into the huge multi-use basketball court. Tyler looked around, Josh by his side, to find no one was there yet.

A moment passed and they both turn when they heard the flap of the double doors behind them and a familiar menacing voice.

“What are you doing here, freak?”

 

Brendon.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tyler finds out the reason why Josh’s dad isn’t around anymore and things get a bit steamy between the two.
> 
> TW:- domestic abuse and smut in this chapter

[[The previous day, at the coffee shop]]

 

The ignition was turned off outside of the ‘Coffee Underground’ café, just off the university district and Tyler had been quiet the entire six-minute car journey; Josh had been busy focusing on the roads so he hadn’t really noticed.

He was engrossed in his own thoughts about the moment that he had with the other boy on his bed, not fifteen minutes ago. It wasn’t romantic as such but there was definitely a connection, you don’t behave so intimately with someone who’s just a friend, or even a best friend. He was so confused that it was almost upsetting to him. He’d realised I’ve the past couple of days just how beautiful Josh was both inside and out - especially out! Tyler was brought back from his thoughts when he felt Josh turn to him in his seat.

“You ready dude?”

“Uh, y-yeah”, Tyler said fumbling for his seatbelt lock.

“You okay?”, Josh asked, concern in his voice as he pushed the clasp on Tyler’s seatbelt, releasing him. Tyler paused looking at Josh, wondering whether asking him would ruin the mood.

“It’s okay buddy, you can tell me”, Josh reassured.

“It’s just, I’m really confused Josh”, he began, now looking down at this hands in his lap.

“You wanna know what’s going on.. with us”.

Tyler nodded, still unable to make eye contact with the boy in fear he wouldn’t like the expression on his face; that it would tel him something that Josh wouldn’t, or couldn’t.

“I can’t give you an answer to a question that even I don’t know yet Tyler”, Josh explained calmly, being careful of his tone, to which Tyler nodded.

“I’m sorry that I’ve confused you. I’ve confused myself! There’s a chemistry here that I’ve never even felt for girls, let alone a dude and I can’t figure out whether it’s because I feel very protective of you or whether it’s because I like you in that way and that scares the shit out of me.”

Tyler finally looked up from his hands to Josh’s face. He was looking slightly to the side of his face, out of the windscreen, his face intense but not angry. Tyler looked back down a little.

“I’m sorry”, he mumbled.

“What for?”, Josh laughed, looking back at Tyler. He pulled Tyler’s chin up to meet his gaze and smiled that charming smile that the boy loved.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s me that’s figuring shit out Tyler. You coming back to Columbus has turned my life completely upside down in a matter of days, mostly in a good way. The last thing I want to do is lead you on and ruin everything. The only thing I ask of you is a bit of time to sort my head out.” Tyler nodded again, silent but smiling understandingly back at Josh.

He had gotten some answers. He knew that Josh had feelings of some sort towards him, and he knew that Josh knew that he did. ‘There’s a chemistry’. That alone made him happier about the situation.

They both climbed out of the low-riding car and Tyler jogged a little round the front of the car toward Josh to meet him on the side-walk. The sun was beaming down, light bouncing off of the bonnet making Tyler notice just how purple and shimmery the car was. When he met him there, Josh bounced into him playfully, sending the boy a good few feet sideways. Tyler looked at him with disbelief and threw himself back with full force, landing them both on the floor in a heap. They laughed on their backs for a few seconds before Josh hauled himself up, offering Tyler a hand. They found the coffee shop once they had composed themselves and went in.

“This place does the best coffee in Columbus dude, I swear by it!”, Josh spouted with excitement as they slowly made their way through a communion of desks to the lounging area.

The place was large, which took Tyler by surprise. There were some built-in chess boards in some of the desks, and what looked like students using a few of them for studies. He assumed they were from the university just a couple blocks west. As they walked through, Tyler could also see a small stage and a bar area, probably for a bit of student night-life. And over on the other side was a little book-nook, a few shelves deep, perfect for going and reading.

“Wow, It’s massive!”, he said to Josh.

“Yeah, but it’s super chill. It’s my favourite place to be sometimes.”

They both made it to the barista bar and Josh already knew what he wanted. Tyler, however, was a bit stuck. He wasn’t great at decisions at the best of times, but with what looked like 30 options for coffee and cocoa.. his brain was exploding.

“Welcome to the Coffee Underground Sirs, what can I get y’all today?”, a female barista chirped, with a southern accent from over the bar towards both boys. Josh wastes no time.

“Large, straight black with a couple shots of caramel, please”

“And you, Sir?”, the girl asked Tyler.

“U-uhh, erm..”. Everything jumbled in his head.

Tyler felt a hand in the small of his back pulling him into Josh’s side. Josh casually leaned his body in closer to Tyler’s, but not touching. He brought the arm that wasn’t touching Tyler up in front of them pointing at the board.

“See they have Cappuccinos, Americano, Latte, the usual. But you can do extras of coffee and cream and also get different milks and flavour shots”, he explained whilst pointing at the individual bits he was mentioning.

Tyler was still stuck. He was too distracted by their little half-embrace they had going on at that moment to think about what flavour coffee he wanted.

_Josh... Josh flavoured coffee!_

Josh realised he wasn’t really getting anywhere and chuckled at Tyler’s deer-in-the-headlights expression. He turned to the barista for and made an order for him as he had noticed a small line forming behind the both of them.

“Large macchiato, extra coffee shot, extra cream with a shot of vanilla please”, Josh he said with great speed.

Tyler looked at him stunned, but grateful. He was surprised the girl understood the order, but she took it down perfectly fine.

“I love vanilla”, he mumbled to Josh, blushing.

“I remember”, he smiled at Tyler. He then turned his attention to the barista girl again.

“Um, can we have them in takeout cups please?” The girl nodded politely to the boy and Tyler looked at him, confused.

“It’s in case we get bored in here, we can take them with”.

They found a little spot on some squishy leather couches in a dim corner and got comfortable. Josh even took his shoes off and crossed his legs, which made Tyler laugh and he decided to follow suit. He took a little sip of his hot beverage and died a little inside.

“Hmmmf..”, he involuntarily huffed with great pleasure, “this is amazing!”, and took another gulp, ignoring how hot it was.

“I’m glad you like it!”, Josh grinned. “I love it in here. It’s gotten me through a lot of shit, this place”, Josh said, a little cryptic. He was now scowling himself, internally cursing opening his mouth. Tyler’s eyebrows furrowed, not sure whether to ask or not, but he braved it.

“What do you mean?”

Josh sighed. He was playing with the edge of his coffee cup’s plastic lid, not wanting to make eye contact with the curious boy.

“I didn’t really mean to say that Tyler, it just slipped out”, he said.

“No, don’t do that. You’re helping me with a lot of shit Josh, it works both ways. Don’t shut yourself off from me. Please.”

He leaned forward a little and placed a reassuring hand on Josh’s folded knee. Josh looked up at him with emotional eyes.

“I’m assuming you’ve noticed my dad isn’t around anymore..”, to which Tyler nodded.

“I was going to ask but I didn’t know if it was a sore subject” he said.

Josh snorted a little, so Tyler assumed that was an understatement.

“About 6 years after you left, we moved here. Mom and Dad weren’t happy, I could tell even then. Arguing all the time about money and me and how I was turning out. Dad didn’t like the fact that I loved playing drums, the noise drove him crazy, but he played it down saying he wanted me to go into academics because there’s ‘no money in playing drums’ and ‘it wouldn’t get me anywhere’. We eventually came to a compromise. He let me keep the drum kit in the basement and I could play three times a week for an hour if I studied hard in my sciences.”

“That’s why you’re so good at science now”, Tyler suggested and Josh nodded.

“The arguing got significantly worse over the space of about a year and my Dad has just lost his job. He started drinking, heavily. I’d come home from school sometimes to find him passed out in his chair, the bottle still in his hand. I started noticing bruises on my moms arms and neck, small ones at first, every now and then. She’d put it down to bumps while she was at work or doing cleaning or something. Then they got bigger and more frequent until she was never w-without a..m-mark... umm..”.

His voice broke. He started shaking a little and tears were welling in his eyes, and the little snivels let Tyler know that Josh was fighting back the urge to cry. He failed. A tear brimmed, and rolled down his soft, perfect skin to the corner of his mouth.

Tyler quickly grabbed a couple of the napkins that the barista had given them with their drinks, and dabbed at Josh’s face, handing him the wad afterwards. Josh blew his nose and wiped at his face again. He took a big breath before continuing.

“Thanks”, he sniffed.

“No problem buddy”, Tyler whispered.

“This went on for years until about twelve months ago. I came home and I could already hear the shouting from outside. I snuck in so I could listen without them hearing me and made my way to the kitchen where all the noise was coming from. There was just.. stuff, everywhere. Smashed glasses, shoes, picture frames from the walls, broken on the floor. I came into the kitchen to find my dad, towering over my mom with a cast iron skillet raised toward her... She w-was black and blue Tyler...” he huffed into a sob.

He hid his face in his hands letting himself cry. He paused to compose himself again and Tyler scooted himself closer to embrace the distraught boy. His own eyes welled, upset at the fact that this had all happened when he was gone. Josh started again.

“She spotted me in the hall at the edge of the kitchen and just said one word to me. ‘Run’... My dad turned and saw me and started after me so I bolted. I ran back through the house to the downstairs bathroom and tried to lock it behind me but he’d caught up and prised the door open before I could. I stood frozen while he just stared me down. I could her my Mom screaming for him to stop and to leave me alone and hit her instead. He turned his head for just a second so I tackled him to the floor. He was drunk so he was easy to take down. We fought there on the floor until he managed to pin me down and just started hitting me and hitting me.”

He paused there again. Face blank, defeated, with wet streaks down his face. Tyler didn’t know what to say. There was nothing he could say.

“I woke in hospital the next day. I had a broken jaw, a fractured eye socket and swelling to my oesophagus where he’d choked me out. I remember my Mom trying to drag him off but she wasn’t strong enough. I genuinely thought I was gonna die. At my own fathers hand... Apparently she’d managed to grab the skillet and hit him over the head, knocking him out but I don’t remember, I’d probably passed out by that point. The police told me that I’d more than likely saved my Moms life, coming in when I did... I’d take that beating a thousand times for her Tyler”.

“I know. I would for my Mom too” he reassured his friend, rubbing his back, “and the police are right, you probably did save your Moms life.”

Josh just nodded. He turned to Tyler now after rubbing the streaks from his face.

“I think that’s why I’m scared Ty...Of this”, he pointed several times between them both, “of relationships in general. Not only am I confused sexuality wise, but I’m terrified of trusting anyone after watching my Dad turn on my Mom over the years. That kind of shit you can’t predict. They were so in love when I was younger.”

“I remember”, Tyler said, nodding.

“So where is your dad now?”.

Josh shrugged, his face blank. He didn’t really seem to care, which Tyler didn’t blame him for.

“I don’t know. My Mom didn’t want to put me through a trial at the age, I was still only fifteen, so we both decided to drop charges if he agreed to divorce my Mom and leave. She also got an indefinite restraining order. He’s not allowed within five miles of me or my Mom unless we give written consent. The only way he can contact us is through a lawyer. I’ve not heard from him since he left.”

Tyler watched the other boy for a moment. He face was still blank but it was full of pain underneath the surface. His shoulders were hunched over and his face to the floor. He looked ashamed, like he felt it was his fault or something.

“Come here”, Tyler almost demanded, leaning back with one of his arms up over the back of the couch, offering Josh a cuddle.

He seemed to take it gladly, a small smile on his face. Josh crawled under Tyler’s arm and onto his chest, one of his hands gripping the boy’s black t-shirt. It filled Tyler with warmth. Not only because Josh was a human radiator, but because he felt protective of the vulnerable boy resting on his torso. They stayed there for a while in their casual embrace, taking sips of their coffee and chatting about other parts of their teen years, both embarrassing and happy times.

Josh told Tyler about a girl he kind of dated when he was fourteen and the little bowling date he took her on. He had decided within the first twenty minutes that he wasn’t really interested in her in that way but he didn’t want to ‘break her heart’ so they ended up dating for a few weeks until she broke up with him because ‘she got bored’. This make Tyler crack up.

“Come to think of it I’ve never actually had much in the way of solid interaction with girls. I guess I’ve never really been interested after all”, he said to Tyler, which actually made Tyler’s heart flutter a little.

“Maybe you’re just a bit of an oblivious gay? Like you didn’t know you were cause you’ve never really had interactions with girls or boys in that way. Possibly a late bloomer, emotionally”, Tyler suggested.

Josh sat up from their embrace, making a face of contemplation, considering his suggestion.

“I guess that makes sense. It would explain my little quirks and flares too,” he agreed.

“Quirks and flares?”

“You know, the makeup and being particular about how I dress and that. It makes sense doesn’t it!”, he replied, getting a little excited, “maybe I am gay and just didn’t know it myself”.

“Possibly”, Tyler smiled, enjoying the fact that Josh seemed in lighter spirits.

They stayed for a little while longer until they had gulped down all of their coffee. Tyler enjoyed the coffee that much that he ordered another in decaf.

“I don’t want to be bouncing off the walls”, he joked with the barista girl.

She laughed politely and turned to make his drink.

“Do you want another, Josh?”.

“Nah I’m good dude, I’ll be sick”, he chuckled.

He thanked the barista, and turned to Josh who was smiling at him. He held his hand out to suggest for Tyler to go first and they headed out.

 

      *                   *                    *

 

2 MISSED CALLS FROM ‘Mom’.

 

Tyler opened his phone to also see texts he hadn’t seen from his Mom.

Mom:- How are you doing Tyler? X

Mom:- You’re quiet honey, have you been sleeping? X

Mom:- Please answer me soon Tyler, you’re worrying me a little. X

Tyler:- Mom, I’m okay, I’ve been keeping myself busy. Can my friend Josh have dinner tonight? X

Mom:- Sure honey, if you’re feeling better? X

Tyler:- I am. He came round to cheer me up 😊

Mom:- That’s great honey. Just make sure you shoot your hoops before your Father gets home. He said you can do 100 today with you not feeling well. X

 

“My Mom said you can have dinner if you like? Saves you walking all the way home”, he joked with Josh.

“Yeah that’s great!”, Josh laughed back.

He was focusing on parking his car in the double drive at his house.

 

Tyler:- Thanks Mom 😁

Mom:- We can order pizza if you like, with your friend coming? X

 

“Pizza good?”, he asked Josh.

“Pfft.. don’t be stupid, pizza is always good Ty. You don’t even have to ask”, he laughed to the other boy.

 

Tyler:- Pizza sounds great! Want me to order it for pickup? X

Mom:- Sure honey, I’ll get it on the way home. X

Tyler:- You’re the best! X

Mom:- I know honey 😉

 

Tyler laughed at that last text and popped his phone in his jeans before climbing out of the car. They both jogged across the road to Tyler’s house. Tyler gestured to Josh to follow him round the side of the house. Confused, Josh followed behind Tyler, down a side-path and into the large back garden, which was split pretty evenly down the middle, half grass, half concrete.

There was a basketball hoop on a post at the far end of the concrete section, with three basketballs by the base. Tyler ran over to a small work-shed which was close to the post and went in. Josh was very confused as to what was going on.

A few seconds and a fair bit of banging and clanging later, Tyler emerged from the shed with what looked like a bicycle pump, with a pointy bit at the end of the clothed tube. He placed it down and made his way over to the basketballs. He picked up two, took them to the pump and went back for the other.

“I need to shoot my hoops”, he explained to Josh while he was pumping up the balls, “and I need to work of come of this caffeine!”

Josh chuckled at this and sat himself down on the grass on the other half of the garden. He watched as Tyler started counting his hoops.

 

“One....two....three..”

“How many do you have to do?”, Josh asked, curious.

“Two hundred a day...four.... on week days, three hundred.... five.... on a weekend, to keep my aim sharp...six..”

“Two hundred!?!”

“...seven... yeah. He lets me off... eight....the day after games....nine... and practices to rest. And he said....ten... I can just do a hundred today....eleven... with not feeling good....twelve..”, Tyler explained to Josh.

“Still two hundred is a lot after having school and stuff”, he urged.

“...thirteen... it’s a commitment Josh ...fourteen... I’m up for scholarship aren’t I.... fifteen.... “, he stopped to look at Josh, “I have to be the best, or I won’t get it”.

“I was under the impression you didn’t really want the scholarship. You didn’t seem too excited when you told me.”

Tyler turned back round to the hoop-pole and shot his sixteenth. He caught the bouncing ball again in his hands and looked back at Josh.

“I don’t know what I want Josh. But I can’t let this slip while I take my sweet time deciding...seventeen..”, he threw another.

Josh nodded to himself. It made sense. Even if Tyler didn’t really want to pursue basketball, it might be his only chance at a college career. He watched in awe as the boy shot hoops from different distances and angles without missing a single one. He’d gotten to his ninety-fourth shot when he heard the side-gate open and his Dad appeared.

“Thought I heard you out here! What are you up to?”, his dad asked.

“Ninety-four”.

“That’s my boy! And who is this?”, he asked cheerfully to the hawk-haired boy longing on the grass. Josh picked himself up and brushed himself off before introducing himself.

“Josh, Sir. We’ve met before, when I was younger”, he explained.

Tyler stopped and turned to the two. His dad looked to him in confusion, before looking back at the other boy.

“Josh..?”, he racked his brain before realisation set in. Both boys could see the pin had dropped when his eyes lit up with delight,

“Josh Dun! You lived just doors down in Clintonvile, yes?”, he asked making sure he had the right boy.

“Yes Sir, That’s me!”, he grinned, mustering up his manliest handshake.

“How about that! You didn’t tell me you were back in touch Tyler?”, he questioned, looking over to the boy who had returned to his hoops.

“Oh, he lives just across the street, Dad.... ninety-seven....He offered me a ride the first day of school.... ninety-eight...and we figured out then who each other was....ninety-nine...”.

“Well I’ll be damned, what a coincidence!”

He turned to his son and asked him to stop before placing himself between Tyler and the pole.

“Right my boy, I want you to show Josh here what you can do”, he nodded to the boy watching. Tyler grinned at Josh, a look of determination in his face about the fact he was about to show off some moves.

“I want to to do dribble, hesitation, into a turnaround jump shot”, he instructed.

Tyler gave a small nod, took a short breath before setting off dribbling the ball four times, reaching his father. He paused for a split second before hesitating right, making his father think he was going to dribble that way, before darting left, bouncing the ball once before jumping and turning 360* in mid air, slam-dunking the ball and swinging off the hoop into a soft landing.

“One hundred..” he breathed after he landed. He flashed a cheeky smile to Josh.

Josh’s mouth hung open in amazement. He was impressed by how agile the boy was, especially for his height. And he couldn’t help noticing how amazing he looked all panting and sweaty like that. His heart was fluttering and he became all hot himself. He subtly tried to catch his breath. Tyler looked at him very purposefully, like he new exactly what he was doing to Josh and flashed him that smile again before looking at his Father.

“That, my boy, was a good shot! Very tight turn around Tyler, well done!”

“Thanks Dad”, he said, being pulled into a playful embrace from his father.

“Now go get showered, you stink”, he laughed to his son.

He nodded and gestured for Josh to follow him inside before darting through the back door into the kitchen, and up through the house to his loft room.

He practically burst through the bedroom door and pulled off his t-shirt immediately revealing his pale-olive torso. Josh followed him through the door and was pleasantly surprised to see Tyler’s naked chest and stomach. He scratched at his head a little, turning awkwardly feeling himself getting hot again. He was startled when he was met with a Tyler, less than a foot away from him with that same cheeky grin in his face. He definitely knew what he was doing. Tyler pulled at the hem of Josh’s pants pulling him towards him, playfully.

“What’s up Jishwa? Am I getting you all hot and bothered?”, he breathed, teasingly to Josh. Josh groaned, rubbing his face with one hand in embarrassment.

“You’re such a fucking tease Tyler”, he complained lightly to the boy in front of him, “that, out there, was not fair”.

He pointed with a thumb over his shoulder, toward the general direction of the garden.

“What wasn’t fair?”, he asked so very innocently.

“You know exactly what I mean, you minx”, he said, almost serious.

“Mhmmm”, Tyler agreed quietly nodding with gooey eyes, before letting go of Josh and heading towards his en suite bathroom, which was similar to Josh’s.

He dropped his jeans to his knees, kicked his legs out of the pants as he was walking and started running the shower in just his rather-tight boxer shorts.

Josh couldn’t believe what he was seeing. How could such an anxious, timid boy have such an evil streak? He’d never seen this side to Tyler and he knew that Tyler knew exactly what he was doing to him. He felt a twitch in his pants. His stomach churned and the heat rushed down to his crotch. Seeing Tyler like this was making him..hard!

He panicked a little and sat himself down on the bed attempting to hide his Tyler-induced semi between his legs. He decided to take his top off being so hot, but casually, so as to not draw attention to himself. He played on his phone for a few minutes while Tyler was showering. He was laying on his back with his knees up and feet flat when he heard the water of the shower cut off. He took a deep breath, preparing himself for another round of sexual tension.

The door of the bathroom opened and out came a wet Tyler with damp disheveled hair and a towel around his hips. Josh couldn’t help but notice the subtle v-lines over either of his hip bones and could only think about one thing. Him and Tyler fucking.

This was torture. He sat up, cross legged and played with his phone some more, trying to distract himself. It worked because next minute, a now-dry Tyler was climbing onto his bed next to Josh in a pair of skinny, black sweat pants. He looked at Tyler with disapproval before he spoke.

“Have you calmed down now?”, he joked to Tyler

“Yeah”, he chirped back, “I’m sorry I know that wasn’t fair. I don’t know what came over me”, he said, back to his usual timid self.

“I do”, Josh started, “you got the chance to show off with your dad. You saw that I liked it so your ego fed off of it and you got a little carried away. There’s nothing wrong with that..”, he leant right into Tyler’s face suddenly as if he was about to kiss him, but stopped with about an inch spare, “..but two can play that game Tyler”, he growled seductively before pulling himself away again chuckling to himself.

Tyler’s heart skipped at the unexpected close proximity. He stared in shock at the boy who was now occupied with a game in his phone. A little part of him didn’t like the fact that he was so close one second, then starved of any contact. He wanted more, and he knew that Josh did too by his reaction earlier, he just didn’t know how to go about it. He felt a heat rise in his stomach, similar to when he was angry, but it felt different. His instincts took over.

He grabbed Josh’s phone from his hand and threw it on the pillows further up the bed. He rose so he was now kneeling and placed his hands on either of Josh’s shoulders for support and straddled the boy. He firmly sat in his crotch so that their bare chests were touching. Josh was stunned. He didn’t know what to do with the situation. He instinctively placed a hand on Tyler’s waist to support him and the other behind him propping them both up.

He stared up at the other boy’s face, shadowed on one side and lit on the other from the sunlight coming through the window. His eyes, though dark, were bright and intense. In that moment he could feel everything. The hairs on his body, his own heart getting faster and a buzzing sensation on his skin caused by the adrenaline running through his veins. He could hear Tyler’s breath getting shallower and feel the minute hairs in the small of his back pricking into goosebumps. It was all so intense.

“T-Tyler, I..”

“Shhhhhh”, Tyler sushed Josh placing his fingertips on his lips. He could see that his eyes were wide and panicked, “what are you afraid of?”

“I.. I don’t know”.

Tyler slid his hands up from Josh’s shoulders up to softly grip some of the boy’s hair. He leant in and pulled Josh’s head up slightly to meet his. Josh’s lips met Tyler’s delicate mouth and they kissed softly. It was just a few short, but deep kisses.

Josh’s chest felt like it was exploding as the adrenaline hit his heart. Tyler pulled back to look at the boy, stroking his curly hair. Josh eyes were more relaxed, almost gooey-eyed, but he looked intensely at Tyler, like he wanted to ravage him.

He pulled Tyler back in, more desperate this time, letting them fall back, fast but controlled, onto the bed. He unfolded his legs and brought his knees up so his feet were flat on the mattress forcing Tyler down into his bulging crotch. He pushed up at Tyler’s butt, which only excited him more. Tyler noticed. He ground his hips down onto Josh’s erection, gaining a moan from the horny boy, making him grin that same cheeky grin from earlier.

It gave him great pleasure watching Josh squirm under him like that; so much that his own dick was getting hard from it. He ground down one more time before leaning back down for another kiss.

Their tongues met, inside each others mouthes and they sucked each other’s lips, kissing deeply for another few minutes until they slowed, calming down. Josh held the back of Tyler’s head, touching his own forehead to his, like he had done when they had their little moment earlier that morning. They nuzzled into each other like that until they both opened their eyes.

They remained like that for a moment until Tyler pushed himself up from Josh’s embrace and sat up on Josh’s hips. Josh followed him and put one of his hands on Tyler waist again.

“I’m sorry. I kinda forced you into that”, he said to Josh after a few seconds. Josh shook his head.

“It’s okay. If I truly didn’t want it I would have told you”.

“So you do want me?”, Tyler teased, smiling.

“Of course I do Ty”, he laughed, “I don’t think you realise how sexy you are. Or maybe you do..”, he accused playfully, “I just didn’t realise myself until I saw you out there. The way you move when you play, it’s amazing!”

Tyler giggled like an embarrassed school girl talking to her crush. It was adorable. Something dawned on Josh. The way the girls reacted to him in the parking lot on the first day, the way he plays basketball.

“Just makes me realise something though Ty,” he started again.

“What?”

“All the girls are gonna go crazy for you. You’ll be fighting them off left, right and centre”, he said, more serious.

“Ugh. Hope not!”, he retorted from the idea which made Josh laugh.

“I’m glad you dislike that idea too. I don’t fancy having to fight them off for you”, he said, relieved.

“Listen”, Tyler began, “theres only one woman I want in my life, and that’s my Mother. I know you’re not ready for us to be together yet, but I hope we can be soon”, he said before giving Josh a light peck and climbing off of him.

“I’ll do you a deal”, he offered Tyler as he was walking over to his jeans he’d left by the bathroom door.

“You’re right, I’m not ready just yet. But I promise you I won’t see anyone else if you promise too. We’ll wait for each other?”, he suggested to the boy. Tyler smiled back at him.

“Deal!”

 

* * *

 

Tyler and Josh ran downstairs, along with Tyler’s other siblings in a hungry stampede. The others ran into the kitchen while Tyler and Josh witnessed Tyler’s Mom struggling through the front door with three large pizza boxes and some smaller boxes of sides and fries.

“Oh here Mrs. Joseph”, Josh stepped in, taking the pizza boxes from her while Tyler took the other small boxes.

“Oh, what a gentleman. You must be Josh. I thought it was you when Tyler mentioned you. My, you’ve grown up so handsome!”, she cooed over Josh placing the palm of her hand in the boy’s cheek. She had always been a very loving and touchy so this wasn’t unusual for her. She obviously recognised Josh from Tyler’s childhood.

“Mom!”, Tyler objected.

“Sorry”, she giggled, pulling her hand away, “I just can’t believe how big you boys are getting!”, she explained to them both.

“Thank you for looking out for my boy while we were at work, I get so worried when he’s like this”, she explained to Josh.

“It’s no problem Ma’am”.

“Pfshh, call me Kelly, Josh. That’s what you used to call me”, she said as she strode through the hall into the kitchen.

The boys followed Tyler’s mom through to the kitchen they’d walked through earlier when they had come in form the back garden. Tyler’s kitchen had an island just like Josh’s except theirs was used as a breakfast-bar style dining area instead of a kitchen sink. Josh and Tyler brought the pizza and sides through to the hungry rabble and started opening the boxes. Tyler’s Dad had already gotten some plates and condiments and dishes them out between everyone.

“Would you like to do the honours boys?”, Kelly asked the two, gesturing to the pizza boxes.

Josh looked confused but Tyler knew exactly what his Mom was talking about. He grabbed the three large boxes and lined them up, one next to another. He placed his hands on the tabs of two of the boxes and suggestively looked at Josh to do the same with the third. Josh grabbed the tab, still looking a bit lost.

“On three”, he commanded.

Everyone huddled in around the boxes expectantly. Josh understood now.

“One. Two. Three..”, They lifted the lids of the pizza boxes simultaneously so all of the hot, pizzery, cheesy steamy goodness erupted from the boxes at once and directly into all of their nostrils. There was a small, harmonic choir of “hmmmmm”, collectively.

Josh looked down to see what looked like a four-cheese, a classic pepperoni, loaded to the brim, and a veggie delight with all sorts of glorious toppings scattered in it. Josh got a little too excited and started clapping his hands like a little kid. Tyler’s Mom laughed which made Josh flush pink.

“Yeah, he really likes pizza”, Tyler threw in and laughed himself.

“Who doesn’t?!”, a small voice joined in. It was Madison, Tyler’s little sister, the youngest of the four. Josh smiled at her, and she grinned back and blushed.

They all dove in, grabbing piece after piece, adding fries and other bits to go with on their plates, until only a few pieces were left. Josh and Tyler sat rubbing their bulging bellies, pizza sauce on their faces.

“Feel sick”, Tyler stayed.

“Me too”, Josh followed.

They both thanked Tyler’s Mom and went upstairs. They decided to play Mario Cart again and this time Josh was determined to woop Tyler’s ass.

**Author's Note:**

> Thankyou to anyone who reads.  
> Mucho love <3


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